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The Death Penalty and the Effects it puts on Families

The controversial argument of whether the death penalty should be abolished or not, will be a topic going on for years. My personal opinion drew me back into doing some research. The code of Hammurabi, more than over one thousand years old: is one of the first uses of capital punishment. The many forms of capital punishment have been used and highly abused since the days the code was first made. Capital punishment has many different views in today’s society. Those views are based off society’s religion, ethics, and economics.

Capital punishment is viewed as a good thing through the eyes of the government than through the eyes of morality. Since the code of Hammurabi, Capital punishment has taken on a new form to enforce these punishments on those who do not like to play the rule- the law.. Capital punishment today has become extremely harsh. Death row being at the top of the charts. What makes a human being susceptible to such harsh punishment? In The United States, typically Capital punishment occurs when a person has been sentenced to their demise. When analyzing such punishment, the one undergoing trial has been accused of doing an act of evil. With, that being said the crime committed have to involve murder, treason, or something on a federal level.

The purpose of Capital Punishment is to ultimately rid those deemed not fit to be alive. This indeed is problem, as sociologists our job is to analyze their upbringing and social backing. “The first thing that sociologists contribute is what is often called a "relational approach." (Snow 43 Soc Perspectives 1, 7-9 ) “Dr Snow contends that the relational approach is a key trait of any sociological perspective. Rather than focusing on the attributes of individuals or a particular group, The study of crime and punishment from a sociological perspective; is a focus on the dynamic relationships between the objects of study, whether those objects are individuals, social groups, neighborhoods, organizations, nation-states, or regions of the world. This tendency is certainly evident in Emile Durkheim's classic work on crime and punishment in which the structures of relationships in society-principally the division of labor determine the kinds of legal systems that societies are likely to have.”(Durkheim The Division of Labor 70). With the basic concept of capital punishment, does it really deter people from crime? "There is no evidence that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect on crime than terms of imprisonment",” according to Amnesty International's report Death Sentences and Executions 2014, published on April 1, this year. Worldwide, by the end of 2014, at least 19,094 individuals were under a death sentence.”  (Jenkinson)

Jenkinson article was written in the opinion that the death penalty should be abolished for good, due to the fact of it not meeting fairness. The person committing the crime does not learn anything from it. For example, a suicide bomber welcomes death, so say if we imprison one and they are sentenced to death, they do not care, they were going to kill themselves anyway. I think that we should keep them and make them rot in a prison cell for the rest of their lives instead of rewarding them. “Death row syndrome is a psychological disorder that inmates on death row can go through when they are put in isolation. Inmates on death row syndrome face suicidal attempts and psychotic delusions. According to some psychiatrists, the results of being confined to death row for an extended period of time, including the effects of knowing one will die and the living conditions, can fuel delusions and suicidal tendencies in an individual and can cause insanity in a form that is dangerous.” (Salzman)

Society’s religious basis of Christianity it is that it is not right to kill, as said in the Ten Commandments. Even though it can be seen as an act of faith to kill those who have been killing it is still seen as an offense against God and to humanity to kill. Therefore lethal injection is seen as something that should be illegal in the religious stand point of the thought that it is murder. The United States was built upon Christian principles and we are being hypocrites by doing so. Economically, it is not necessarily good for the economy, but it can help in some ways lower the crime rate to a small percentage and keeps people out of prison. “The study counted death penalty case costs through to execution and found that the median death penalty case costs $1.26 million.” (Cost of the Death Penalty) Lethal Injection is used and this type of punishment is is extremely costly.

Ethically, this varies because those rare cases in which that person is innocent, with that being said, some people have been put on death row and have been killed innocently under lethal injection. This is an action that cannot be justified due to the possible innocence of the person who is being put to death.

Rachel King, wrote a piece explaining the impacts on families. She began her research by conducting multiple interviews of family members of murder victims and family members of the condemned. ( King, R 2006) King ruled that “There are many ways in which the death penalty harms families. For the murder victims' family members, the death penalty establishes a hierarchy of victims where some lives are valued more than others. It turns family members against each other. It creates a class of "good" victims and "bad" victims. The families of the condemned are  traumatized by the process and feel ostracized and alienated as they watch their government systematically prepare to kill their loved one. They feel as if their entire community has turned against them. And worst of all, the death penalty teaches people, especially children, that killing is an acceptable way to solve problems.” (King, R 2006) King discusses how it breaks families apart especially through a time where they are needed the most. “One of the saddest aspects of the death penalty is how it tears at the fabric of families, turning them against each other at a time when they need each other most. Family members may have differing feelings about the death penalty and they are often pitted against each other as the case progresses towards execution.” (King 2006)

Capital punishment has many different views in today’s society. Those views are based off society’s religion, ethics, economics and its effects on families. In modern society the purpose of capital punishment is to deter crime and give an incentive to the public. Capital punishment can either be seen as good or bad however, there are people that believe that capital punishment is a fair and just way to deter crime, but others believe that it’s against the morality of nature to kill another human being.

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Works Cited

Avi Salzman, "Killer's Fate May Rest on New Legal Concept," Santa Clara University, 1 February 2005.

"Costs of the Death Penalty." Costs of the Death Penalty. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 November 2016.

David A. Snow, The Value of Sociology, 42 Soc Perspectives 1, 7-9 (1999).

King, R. (2006). THE IMPACT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ON FAMILIES OF DEFENDANTS AND MURDER VICTIMS' FAMILY MEMBERS. Judicature, 89(5), 292-296. Retrieved from https://login.cyrano.ucmo.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/274602335?accountid=6143

Lancet, T. (2015). Ending the death penalty. The Lancet, 385(9975), 1262. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60666-3