Alright well I suppose it's about time I publish my first post on here. I don't even remember when I created this thing, but it was a while ago and I haven't even done anything with it yet. But here it goes. This first entry was inspired by someone's post on Facebook who was disagreeing with the idea of the death penalty, and it got me thinking. Normally I'm not one to engage in political debate, but I figured if there's anywhere I can write whatever the heck I want to, this is it. Of course, this is not intended to be inflammatory, I just felt like writing down some of my thoughts. I'm sure I have many good friends who disagree with me, and that's absolutely fine, but we're all entitled to our own opinion right? Right (and keep in mind, this is an unresearched, completely biased "rant"). So without further ado...
People who say the death penalty is somehow old-fashioned, unfair, overly cruel, or inhumane, or whatever similar description they may use, to me don't seem to have a good understanding of why it exists. Though, admittedly, it's easy to see why they might think that. I mean, who are we, as imperfect humans, to decide that someone else no longer deserves to live? Where do we get the right to play God with someone's future? And I'm sure there are many other arguments which are very valid and make a lot of logical sense.
However...
In order to really understand why the death penalty has a useful role to play in our society, we need to first talk about the mechanics of laws, justice, consequences, or punishment. First of all, we all know and (at least most of us) agree that there is a need for laws. It's pretty easy to see that the state of things would dissolve pretty quickly if there wasn't anything there as sort of a guideline for permissable behavior. And in order for a law to be at all effective or meaningful, there needs to be some sort of consequence for breaking it. In fact, it's pretty fair to say that a law isn't a law without a punishment attached. This is all pretty simple stuff.
Now what we really have to remember about a punishment is that in an ideal society, it would never have to be used. The punishment is not created because anybody wants to enact it, but is created as a deterrent for unlawful behavior. And in order for it to be just, it needs to be at least on somewhat the same level as the crime. For example, because speeding is a relatively minor crime, the punishment is also relatively minor (of course, it becomes more severe the faster you were going, because the crime becomes more severe as well). Because of that, we see a lot of people speeding. That's human nature- if we aren't too scared of the consequences of an action, we're ok with pushing the limits if it might be convenient for us. And if we're caught, we know exactly what's going to happen to us. We know the risk, and make our decision based on that.
With more severe crimes, it's still the case that the punishment isn't there because someone high up gets off on putting people in jail. Everyone would rather (with perhaps the small exception of those employed by the Justice Department) the prisons stayed empty. The original reason we build the prisons is essentially to have a standing threat to those who might break the law. And I'm sure it works fairly well- I'd imagine there are countless crimes that would happen if those contemplating them weren't afraid of going to prison (though obviously it isn't perfect... some might argue that prison isn't what it used to be, and therefore it strikes less fear into the hearts of some. That's a whole other topic though).
Ok. So how does this all relate to the death penalty? I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. The death penalty does not exist in order to kill criminals. Let me repeat that: THE DEATH PENALTY DOES NOT EXIST TO KILL CRIMINALS. We aren't trying to rid the earth of its scum; in fact, in the ideal society (as mentioned before) we would never, ever have to use it. The purpose of having such a severe consequence in the picture is to act as a deterrent for such severe crimes. It's to scare people from committing murder, rape, etc. A strong punishment like that might be just enough to make a person pause and consider before they act, for the sake of self-preservation. But people obviously still manage to get over that, it seems, because people are still being executed. The important thing to remember here, however, is that they acted knowing full well the potential consequences of their actions. In other words, the only ones who really choose to keep the death penalty around are the ones who have earned it by making certain choices. No one is killing them mercilessly- they are choosing to kill themselves, just as surely as someone making the decision to jump off a skyscraper would. You lose the ability to choose as soon as you've stepped off the edge, and they lose the ability to choose as soon as they commit a crime worthy of such a consequence.
So, to recap, we need punishments in order to have laws, and we need to enforce them in order to give them any meaning. The more we want to prevent people from breaking a law, the stronger the consequence we name. So the death penalty is not something a cruel and controlling government has enacted to get rid of criminals or "teach them a lesson". It's there to prevent heinous crime, not to somehow repair a situation, because obviously it doesn't do that. If we get rid of it, we may get rid of that moment of hesitation that could save the life of an innocent person. And that's not a society I want to live in.
