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My Question of the Day for 11 August 2009
My Question of the Day: Does the death penalty deter crime?
(derived from a conversation I had with @AbayKamau; thanks)
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The death penalty does not deter crime; much like imprisonment does not deter crime. I would like to say the statistics on whether the death penalty deters the crime of murder.
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LikeDislikeIn some cases, an infinitely small number, it may deter crime.
More often it does not.
People who commit murder often kill themselves afterward.
Obviously, they were not deterred.
The effect of death penalty is to allow for revenge.
The kind of revenge that would be a crime if done by an individual.
The state should not be killing citizens except in defense of innocent life.
Observe how Iran has murdered people for protesting recently.
U.S., by the way, is the number one executioner in the world, both percentage- wise and in total numbers.
The death penalty is disproportionately used against poor and minorities.
There have been over a hundred cases of people being found innocent based on DNA results.
Before DNA testing they were executed wrongly.
There are still innocent people convicted of crimes, generally poor and minorities.
So, let’s restrain the desire of the omnipotent pro-death people (who coincidentally are also anti-choice) to commit revenge killings in our name.
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