The Death Penalty as a Form of Punishment - Essay Example

The various lawful means through which the death penalty is administered comprise hanging, lethal injection, firing squad, electrocution, gassing, and use of the guillotine (Duhaime 1). The offenses punishable via capital punishment include but are not limited to rape and other sexual crimes, murder, espionage, treason, and repeated crimes.

They are referred to as capital crimes. This form of punishment is also performed as part of military justice. The criminal provisions for the death penalty deem such individuals (convicted offenders) as a gross menace to the existence of society (Legal-explanations.com 1). The majority of countries around the world have banned the death penalty. Infoplease.com quotes Amnesty International which records that 137 countries have abolished this form of punishment. Additionally, a considerable reduction in the number of executions yearly in countries that have not banned it is evident.

For instance, in the year 2007, twenty-four countries put 1,252 people to death, (of which eighty-eight percent took place in Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and the USA alone), while in the previous year, they had executed 1,591 individuals. In 51 countries that apply the death penalty to particular crime offenders, approximately 3,350 people received the death penalty in 2006. In the year 2009, more than twenty thousand prisoners were on death row globally (Infoplease.com 1). In the view of people who support capital punishment, the threat of executions dissuades individuals from committing capital crimes, and thus it is more effective than incarceration.

While this claim is credible, numerous studies on the topic of the death penalty and deterrence in addition to the rate of capital crimes in countries that apply the death penalty yield different results – they do not support this idea. In effect, in countries that do not apply the death penalty, the rate of capital crimes is continuously lower as opposed to those countries that apply it. For instance, of the four regions of the United States, the Southern region has the highest rate of capital crimes despite the region having more than eighty percent of all executions in the United States.

Moreover, a recent study revealed that of the surveyed United States’ top criminologists, eighty-eight percent do not believe that capital punishment deters capital crimes (Lacock & Radelet 503). There is ample proof that capital crime rates and the death penalty lack correlation. A major study by the United Nations concluded that there lacks substantiation of the view that compared to life incarceration; the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect. Findings from the United States of America in addition indicate that the death penalty does not prevent capital crime.

Moreover, reports from the American Civil Liberties Union divulge that states that apply death penalty laws do not have lower rates of capital crimes than those states that do not apply them (Peikrishvili 5).