Is Death Penalty Ever Justified
Is Death Penalty ever justified? Capital punishment otherwise, also know as death penalty is a legal process whereby a criminal gets executed as a form of punishment. In the past, Capital punishment had been practised by almost all the societies. However, currently due to the increase in awareness of humans’ rights an approximate of 97 countries had abolished this form of punishment. That being said, there are still 58 nations of which includes Singapore, are actively practising it. In my opinion, all human life is to be truly cherished.
Who gave us the rights to deprive another man’s life just because he had committed an unlawful act from our perspective? Instead, offenders who truly want to turn over a new leaf should be given a second chance. Reformation, or rehabilitation is one way, but the succession of such methods lies between whether the offender is able to change or not. As it would be a daunting task to really gauge how penitent they are. Hence, rehabilitation cannot guarantee the safety of the rest of society from these uncivilized criminals, whereas capital punishment, being permanent, can.
A death penalty can also be served as a strong deterrent against potential criminals. Humans are naturally afraid of death, and would rethink again before offending the law. Death penalty can also be seen, as a way to console the victim’s families, should the criminal committed an act of murder. However, one could also argue that even if justice is served, we can never bring back the dead to life. That being said, I think an alternative punishment could be that instead to just end a person’s life, we should make full use of it.
Examples could be having them work for the society, clean the streets or even build roads. Cynically, people will argue that these programmes are even more dangerous, more labour intensive as strict supervision is needed to prevent any sabotage or outbreaks from the offenders. In material terms, for a country like Singapore with scarcity of land space, it would be impossible to simply jail the criminals as there would not be enough prisons. Thus such alternatives may not be quite feasible, however, I believe that in the future technology will help us solve these problems and ultimately exploit these wasted lives.
The main reason why capital punishment is still valid today is because people still commit crimes that deserve such a sentence. As our civilization continues to advance exponentially, it does not automatically mean that people have become more disciplined as well. There will always be deviants in society, and punishment must be meted out to them to maintain law and order. On the bottom line, death penalty is justified, but it should be sparingly used. At the end of the day, we are all humans, and we should not deliberately end a person’s life that easily.
