Advantages And Disadvantages Of Capital Punishment - Essay Example

English 4th April, A Comparison of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Capital Punishment Capital punishment refers to the killing of criminals guilty of grave crimes as a way of punishing them for the crimes that they have committed. As a form of punishment, capital punishment has a number of advantages and disadvantages. This paper compares and contrasts the two main advantages and disadvantages of capital punishment. One of the advantages of capital punishment is that it helps to deter crime.

This is because once criminals have been killed, they will not have another chance of committing some more crimes; also, since capital punishment is a cruel form of punishment, many potential criminals are afraid of being subjected to capital punishment and for that reason they abstain from committing crimes. On the other hand, however, although capital punishment can help to deter crimes, capital punishment causes deep pain and loss to the family of the executed criminals. This is because, however grave are the crimes committed by the criminals who are executed, their family members and their friends still love them, although they may not approve of the grave crimes.

For this reason, therefore, capital punishment causes real emotional trauma to the family members and friends of the executed criminal. A comparison of the deterrent advantage of capital punishment and the emotional trauma disadvantage of capital punishment shows that the advantage of capital punishment far outweighs the disadvantage. This is because since capital punishment helps to prevent further commission of crime, capital punishment helps to prevent more emotional trauma in the lives of people.

This is because grave crimes cause emotional trauma to the relatives and friends of the victims of the crimes. Hence, the deterrent advantage of capital punishment outweighs the emotional trauma disadvantage of capital punishment because it helps to prevent more emotional trauma to the victim’s relatives and friends. The second advantage of capital punishment is that it relieves the government of the economic burden of feeding and meeting the other basic needs of criminals guilty of grave crimes.

This is because it is actually expensive for the government to meet economic needs of criminals, guilty of heinous crimes, while they are in prison. On the other hand, although, capital punishment in fact relieves governments of the economic burden of meeting the economic needs of criminals guilty of serious crimes, capital punishment, however, deprives governments of productive members of the society. This is because many criminals guilty of grave crimes are people with various skills that can be put into various use for the economic good of a country.

For this reason, therefore, a comparison of the advantage of relieving the government of economic burden of meeting the basic needs of criminals guilty of grave crimes, with the disadvantage of depriving government of productive members of the society shows that the disadvantage outweighs the advantage. This is because, although, capital punishment relieves governments of the economic burden of meeting the economic needs of the criminals guilty of grave crimes, the government can, however, put the skills of criminals guilty of heinous crimes into use to ensure that the criminals are economically productive and able to provide for their basic needs.

For this reason, therefore, instead of killing criminals guilty of serious crimes on economic grounds, it is more reasonable to engage the criminals in various economic worth activities to ensure that the criminals are able to fend for themselves.