Honestly for a long time I was on the fence on this subject as well, it wasn't until about 3 years ago that I really decided on a firm stance concerning the death penalty. For perspective sake, I'm 31 and American so all I my comments will represent that.
The first thing I want to address is the several people saying that the death penalty will save money/food/air/space or whatever else. Unfortunately none of this is true, while I understand that hypothetically you could just put a bullet in the brain of everyone sentenced to death there are very good reasons it doesn't work that way. In America there is a long process of mandatory appeals before the death penalty is enacted and these are very necessary to the integrity of the system. During these appeals people have been found to be innocent, and it is known for a fact that despite all of the precautions we take innocent people have been executed in the United States, and anything that shortens the processes would result in more mistakes made.
The Criminal Justice System serves 5 purposes, dependent on the society these purposes are given different weight.
1) Punishment - punishing offenders
2) Deterrent - preventing new offenders with threat of punishment
3) Rehabilitation - correcting the behavior of offenders
4) Removal - keeping offenders confined to prevent further bad acts
5) Revenge - providing a sense of well being to victims
Several people have mentioned rape and the like here, but in America the death penalty can generally only be applied to murder and treason, and since treason is so rare we're only going to look at murder here.
Clearly with the death penalty we aren't looking at rehabilitation, and while some people see it's value the American government doesn't recognize the value of revenge in the Criminal Justice System so let's look at the remaining 3 purposes the death penalty might serve.
Removal, this is the most clear use for the death penalty, however since life without the possibility of parole serves the same purpose (and in the case of a Federal facility with equal effectiveness) we can count that as a wash. Similarly as has been discussed in this thread already, punishment can fall on either side of the fence so there's little value in debating between the two. Which leaves us with deterrent.
A few people here have already suggested that the threat of the death penalty may prevent murders from happening in the first place. Let's ignore the statistics involving crime rates for the moment and just look at it from an abstract. When broken down intentional murders (accidental murders also don't fall under the death penalty) are committed for one or more of three reasons.
1) Passion - someone gets angry and kills someone in the heat of the moment.
2) Profit - someone thinks they will gain something of value to them by committing the murder
3) Psychosis - someone who does not know right from wrong kills out of compulsion.
When we think of it this way it because obvious where the flaw to the deterrent argument arises. In the cases of Passion and Psychosis there is no consideration of the cost of committing a murder, no substantial forethought of the consequences so no form of deterrent will effect them. In the case of Profit many people argue that the death penalty would deter but you have to remember that Profit murderers expect that they won't get caught. There is no-one out there who kills someone for prophet the the expectation that if they get caught they will ONLY serve 20 years in prison followed by a lifetime of being a convicted murderer. That's going to fall short in any cost benefit analysis, therefore in those cases getting caught is simply a yes/no proposition, the punishment whether death or simple imprisonment is effectively the same.
So for these reasons, I am against the death penalty.
The first thing I want to address is the several people saying that the death penalty will save money/food/air/space or whatever else. Unfortunately none of this is true, while I understand that hypothetically you could just put a bullet in the brain of everyone sentenced to death there are very good reasons it doesn't work that way. In America there is a long process of mandatory appeals before the death penalty is enacted and these are very necessary to the integrity of the system. During these appeals people have been found to be innocent, and it is known for a fact that despite all of the precautions we take innocent people have been executed in the United States, and anything that shortens the processes would result in more mistakes made.
The Criminal Justice System serves 5 purposes, dependent on the society these purposes are given different weight.
1) Punishment - punishing offenders
2) Deterrent - preventing new offenders with threat of punishment
3) Rehabilitation - correcting the behavior of offenders
4) Removal - keeping offenders confined to prevent further bad acts
5) Revenge - providing a sense of well being to victims
Several people have mentioned rape and the like here, but in America the death penalty can generally only be applied to murder and treason, and since treason is so rare we're only going to look at murder here.
Clearly with the death penalty we aren't looking at rehabilitation, and while some people see it's value the American government doesn't recognize the value of revenge in the Criminal Justice System so let's look at the remaining 3 purposes the death penalty might serve.
Removal, this is the most clear use for the death penalty, however since life without the possibility of parole serves the same purpose (and in the case of a Federal facility with equal effectiveness) we can count that as a wash. Similarly as has been discussed in this thread already, punishment can fall on either side of the fence so there's little value in debating between the two. Which leaves us with deterrent.
A few people here have already suggested that the threat of the death penalty may prevent murders from happening in the first place. Let's ignore the statistics involving crime rates for the moment and just look at it from an abstract. When broken down intentional murders (accidental murders also don't fall under the death penalty) are committed for one or more of three reasons.
1) Passion - someone gets angry and kills someone in the heat of the moment.
2) Profit - someone thinks they will gain something of value to them by committing the murder
3) Psychosis - someone who does not know right from wrong kills out of compulsion.
When we think of it this way it because obvious where the flaw to the deterrent argument arises. In the cases of Passion and Psychosis there is no consideration of the cost of committing a murder, no substantial forethought of the consequences so no form of deterrent will effect them. In the case of Profit many people argue that the death penalty would deter but you have to remember that Profit murderers expect that they won't get caught. There is no-one out there who kills someone for prophet the the expectation that if they get caught they will ONLY serve 20 years in prison followed by a lifetime of being a convicted murderer. That's going to fall short in any cost benefit analysis, therefore in those cases getting caught is simply a yes/no proposition, the punishment whether death or simple imprisonment is effectively the same.
So for these reasons, I am against the death penalty.
