I was looking on
www.religioustolerance.org 's section on the death penalty and came up with a question.
I have heard some proponents of the death penalty say that it is a 'deterrent' for crime. But is it really? According to the website I mentioned above:
"The homicide rate in those states with the death penalty is almost double the rate in states without the death penalty. It is not known whether this is due to: -People in high-homicide states demanding the death penalty as a perceived deterrent, or-[FONT=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]Use of the death penalty by the state cheapens the value of life, and causes a higher homicide rate, or[/FONT]
-[FONT=trebuchet ms,arial,helvetica]Some other reason."[/FONT]
Granted, the authors of this site do state in their belief statement that they are against the death penalty, but they usually do an okay job of presenting things without interjecting their own opinions. I could be missing something on this, though. Here is the Wikipedia article on it, with several other links from the same site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penaltyFrom what I have seen, Wiki usually tries to avoid bias.
So, do you think the death penalty is a deterrent? To be honest, I don't know. But I don't really think so because it tends to be assigned fairly unevenly. If a person thinks or sees that the penalty isn't assigned consistently for whatever crime and is therefore not a guarantee, they aren't likely to see it as a deterrent. What do you think?
