The 2nd Holocaust
"What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing" -Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables.
Capital punishment - also known as death penalty - is a legal process through which a person is put to death by a state as punishment for a crime. In the United States it's used almost exclusively for aggravated murders committed by mentally competent adults. This punishment is currently legal in 32 out of 50 states (64% of the U.S.A.). The righteousness of this method of punishment has been long debated by many. There are plenty of reasons stated about why capital punishment should or should not be abolished in the U.S. However, the death penalty is an act of inhumanity that should be abolished for it goes against our moral beliefs and does not accomplishes its purpose.
People in the U.S. might not be completely aware of the impact of capital punishment in this country. According to procon . org, 1188 people in the US was executed from 1977 through 2009, primarily by means of lethal injection. The average cost for a capital punishment case (including the killing process, trials, lawyers, and maximum security cells) is about 2 million dollars - 4 times the cost of keeping a prisoner in prison for a lifetime. This leads to a total of roughly two thousand million dollars spent since 1977 in capital punishment. Also, the murder rate in the U.S. is about 6 times greater than that of Britain, and 5 times than that of Australia. Curiously, neither of this two countries have capital punishment as a legal sentence. And within the U.S., Texas (which uses capital punishment as legal sentence), doubles the murder rate of Wisconsin (which does not use capital punishment).
Plenty of people supports the use of capital punishment in the U.S. They argue that a high percentage of our taxes goes to prisons and it's not fair giving murderers a "free" life - giving them shelter and food. Many others say that the abolishment of capital punishment would limit the government power. Also, they talk about how we would act the same way if the victim would've been a loved one. And perhaps it's somehow true, all of this, but it happens that it's actually more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive. It happens, also, that we would be giving the government god-like power. And sadly, it also happens that we look for "justice" when we get hurt, it's collective consciousness, and I understand it. However, revenge is not synonym of justice, and our history clearly shows how our ways of giving "solutions" to problems have not been the best ones.
The death penalty puts many, like me, to wonder where humanity is left at. If there is still any. What happens with those who were actually innocent and yet sentenced to death by mistake? There is no come back from it. What do we do, then? What do we tell to their families? Do we go ahead and erect an apologetic tombstone over their grave? "Sorry, we killed you by mistake, rest in peace..." Oh! But there are those who actually killed. Then, let's just go ahead and create a vicious cycle- killing those who kill, right? Should we get killed as well? Or we have such privileges to be the exception? What is the justification behind it? Justice? If that's what justice is supposed to be we might as well just go ahead and arouse a second holocaust, instead of Jewish, we'll kill "not deservers of life."
Capital punishment is not the way of making justice to those who kill and it should be abolished. It's clear that the system of rehabilitation in prisons is not the best one, but that's our fault. The death penalty is an act of inhumanity and it goes against our morals, our beliefs. It's an irony in our lives, and yet many support it passionately. There are certain human behaviors that I just cannot understand. Having the death penalty in my country confuses me- I don't really know if I should laugh at the irony, or just go ahead, sit in the darkest corner of my house, and cry.
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