Month: February 2015

The Death Penalty should be Reintroduced as a Punishment for Certain Crimes.

The death penalty is a punishment that is very controversial and is a punishment that was previously used in the UK but was abolished completely. I believe that it should be brought back as it can be a powerful deterrent to a range of extreme and dangerous crimes.

In addition, the death penalty can give closure to the victims’ families who have severely suffered for many years. It is apparent that the death penalty provokes many strong anti opinions but these must be challenged. Amnesty International is an organisation which believes that executions should be abolished, no matter what the circumstances. They are working to remove the death penalty altogether, claiming that they will work relentlessly to abolish the punishment in all countries around the world. Amnesty have also expressed their opinion about the effects of the death penalty and how they believe this does not deter crime. However, facts and statistics show that this is clearly not the case. We can look at Japan and see that the only two crimes that are punishable by the death penalty are in fact murder and treason. An amazing and a real eye opening fact about Japan is that there is only 1 execution per 18,067,952 people of their population. This fact really does underline my point about the death penalty deterring crime.

It is clear to see the death penalty is definitely a deterrent to someone who is planning murder. Without this put in place, murderers may not be punished as they deserve. We can also see in news reports that when murders are committed, the majority of views always seem to believe that the amount of time the murderer was given in jail as a punishment was either not enough or that there should be an alternative punishment, the obvious one of course being the death penalty. There are many reasons why I agree with this particular opinion, the main one being the amount of money that will still be spent on those prisoners who’ve deliberately planned to take away the life of another human being. A truly shocking fact that I found was that when court costs, police and other steps are taken into account, £65,000 is spent on the prisoner. An even more eye-watering fact is that an average of £40,000 is spent yearly on the inmate. So on average, a 25 year sentence in jail in the UK will cost £1,000,000 to cover. And guess who pays for that? The taxpayer. These murderers have killed a person and are given a place to live and given food, all for free. To me that just doesn’t seem fair, and that’s a big reason why I think these monsters should be punished via the death penalty.

Currently 1 in nearly 100 American adult citizens are in prison. As of 2014, the United States of America has an estimated population of 318.9 million, so you can only just start to imagine how many prisoners are in the USA’s system. A 2011 study has been revealed by the U.S Bureau of Justice Statistics stating that 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons. Having the death penalty put in place for all premeditated murder cases would definitely cut down the amount of prisoners and also save the costs of services for the taxpayers.

When a murderer takes a life, there is an inequality of justice when the convicted killer is incarcerated. Why, you may ask, is there an inequality of justice? Robert Macy, a district attorney of Oklahoma expressed his opinion on the death penalty and its purpose. “In 1991, a young mother was rendered helpless and made to watch as her baby was executed. The mother was then mutilated and killed. The killer should not lie in some prison with three meals a day, clean sheets, cable TV, family visits and endless appeals. For justice to prevail, some killers just need to die.” The amount of pain, grieving and depression that the victims’ families go through just to find out this is extraordinary, and this is why I believe that the death penalty gives not only retribution but also a sense of equality and balance in justice.

I understand that there are people who believe the death penalty is morally wrong as there have been cases of wrongful execution. An example of where the death penalty has had a miscarriage of justice is the case of George Stinney, where this 14 year old boy was wrongly convicted of murdering 2 girls, both under the age of 12. He was given the death penalty and was killed using the electric chair. Although this may seem like a disadvantage for the death penalty, I believe that these mistakes happen very rarely and there will always be mistakes in a system containing criminals. Moreover, for the greater good of society, even though mistakes have been made, this system is justified in order to protect citizens.

To conclude, I believe that if a person deliberately kills another person, they should be sentenced to death. This gives consolation to families who will have to find a way to live their lives without those who were so close to them, and they will never be able to see those lost loved ones ever again. Another reason is the fact that it frees up space and saves money in the prison systems around the world, and most importantly it cuts down on the amount of deliberate murders in the short term and long term future, and cutting down on the grief for those families.

It was an unusually hushed evening outside Stockwell station as the clouds enveloped the city. The typically busy fruit and flower stand, which was always open, lay empty and was being pummeled by the elements. This time the fierce rain was teeming down on the stand and the street was completely abandoned. I looked around desperate for somebody to share a word…or even a feeling with. Whoever thought a Londoner would say that! The sky looked as if a ragged grey blanket had been smothered across it as I surveyed the station around me.

I glanced at the departure boards for any form of covered transport home but they stared morosely back at me, all saying the same thing. No way home here. Dressed in only my shirt and shorts, I was frozen to the bone and shaking from the chilling weather – my knees felt non-existent at this point. They were so numb due to the brutal weather, it felt like I was slithering my way along an ice skating rink. This was clear to see, unlike the sky above with the pitch black clouds smearing it like paint. The dark tones above were making what few people were left out on the street run for cover and I knew I’d soon be on my own…

I was dreading the thought of the trek back home, about a 15 minute walk, when suddenly the idea crossed my mind to take a much quicker and more direct route. As I walked past the usually jam-packed local pub, The Rose And Crown, it was for some odd reason near to deserted, uninhabited; it was quite strange but I thought nothing of it. Maybe it was the numbing raw coldness – too intense to be outside for some people. Once I’d made my way past the pub, I found myself in a dilemma. There were three roads, one of which was a much quicker way than my usual route, maybe taking around 5 minutes to get home. It’s important to mention that I’d only been down this crooked path maybe once or twice before. It was a very narrow and winding road, with the tough rooted trees overcrowding it, like the tentacles of a city-living octopus. Even the dull grey paving stones were ruptured, making it almost impossible to walk along – they were notorious for being dangerously slippery when the rain was as bad as this.

Then there was another road, taking maybe 10 minutes, but I knew this road was by far the quickest one. However, this one was even more neglected than the first road, even the branches of the trees had cracked off from the violent wind. There was always tons of old rubbish which is never taken away. It looked like a dystopian world in contrast to the one we are living on now. Most, if not all, of the homes seemed isolated from the “real world” – they didn’t even look homed, in fact they seemed almost disowned. Then there was my usual route, which happened to also be the only one lit up by lampposts.

The other routes were close to pitch black, but by this point I just wanted to get home.

I had just made my way past the first couple of ruined, brownstone houses, which looked like they’d had old coffee spilt on them and never been restored. It was at this moment when I decided to look at the time on my phone. I glanced down to see in shock that the time read 11:11PM. I was astounded, to say the least, to see it was this late. I began to wonder if my phone was broken, because it simply did not feel like I had been walking for over 4 hours. I rang my mother – just as I went to call her, my phone cut out.

I was all alone, on this pitch black, unwelcoming street, with no source of light. I was absolutely frantic with fearfulness on this bitterly frigid night. I decided I was going to walk a bit faster at this point;  well, that was an understatement. I heard the slow drops of the rain, tapping from roof to roof, like pencils on a table.

Suddenly, I thought I saw a shadow, the shadow of an animal I think, around the back of one of the houses. As soon as I looked again through the rain it was gone. My pace quickened along with my heart. Did I just see that or was it in my head? The rain continued to pound down as I hurried down the alleyway towards home.

Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow of something, something big, eased out behind me…