Effectiveness of Capital Punishment (Essay Sample)

The Capital Punishment Prevents Future Murders
Student’s Name
Institution’s Name
The Capital Punishment Prevents Future Murders
According to Healey (2010), punishment has always been used by society to discourage would-be criminals from indulging in unlawful actions. Strongest punishment possible is to be used by the society into deterring murder since the society’s highest interest is to prevent murder, which is the death penalty. Potential murders will fear to their lives if murderers are executed hence think twice before they commit murder. It is important to ascertain if the death penalty prevents a future murder.
Barber (2013) suggests that for years, murder rates results analyzed by criminologists have been inconclusive to determine whether the rates of murder fluctuate with the murderers convicted being executed. In 1973, a new kind of analysis by Isaac Ehrlich produced results and showed for every inmate executed, deterred others from committing murder and led to 7 lives being spared. Follow up studies by the disciples of Ehrlich has produced similar results.
It takes a long time before an individual is executed and the death penalty is rarely utilized, this contributed to inconclusiveness in some deterrence studies (Healey, 2010). Best deterrence’s are punishments that are sure and swift. Failure of deterrence is not the fact that some countries and states that do not employ the death penalty have fewer murder cases than those that do. If the death penalty is not used by states with high death penalties, they would have even higher rates (Barber, 2013). If capital punishment were to be used by the states with fewer murder cases, they would decrease considerably.
According to Ernest van den Haag, a professor at Fordham University and an expert in Jurisprudence believes because people fear death when compared to anything else, more murderers are deterred by the death penalty. The death that is approved by the courts and inflicted by the courts is feared most (Barber, 2013). According to Healey (2010), what is likely to deter most is what people fear most. Some murderers that other means are in capable to deter are deterred by the death penalty. Prisoners that have a life sentence or tempted to kill offenders or a judge can only be deterred by the Capital punishment. If capital punishment is incapable of deterring them, then nothing else would possibly deter them. Healey (2010) suggests that what we owe to law enforcers exposed to risks is all the protection. The capital punishment ensures no murders can be committed by the executed murderer. Strictly speaking, in a similar way a robber in prison is incapacitated so is the executed murderer.
To sum it up, Healey (2010) is of the view that, capital punishmen...