RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Before talking about the essential
role of death penalty, you have to think about the meaning, and the purpose, of
any kind of punishment. If you consider that the purpose is to prevent the
guilty from being nasty again, you can be seduced by an argumentation in favour
of the suppression of capital punishment. But you have to think about another
aspect of the problem: a punishment is also useful to impress people, to make
them fear the law.
In fact, let's take the example of
a young misfit, which has grown in a violent atmosphere, influenced by older
delinquents, e t c . . . He lives in the streets; he's got no aim but to
survive. This is the kind of person who could possibly kill someone for money,
or even for f u n . . . Why would he fear prison? Life would be easier for him
there. In addition, in many cases, when you behave normally, you can benefit
from penalty reductions. This young misfit needs to be impressed; he needs to
know that the law is a frontier. When you cross it, you can lose your
life. That is why capital punishment helps keeping a distance between robbery
and murder. If you abolish it, you suppress the difference between these two
types of crime, which are completely different.
But there is also a limit to
define: even if death penalty is unavoidable, it would be a crime to apply it
to inadequate cases. If there are no premeditation or past facts which
can justify such a punishment, it is far too strict to apply death penalty.
That is why the lawmakers have to establish precisely the context in which
capital punishment can be pronounced. That is the price to pay to limit
violence without using excessive violence...
0 comments