The Death Penalty is Hypocrisy

For a long time now I have taken a dim view of the excessive call and use of the Death Penalty or Capital Punishment. For one point, “punishment” is something I always deemed as a corrective measure to ensure the perpetrator sees the wrong in their ways and thus learns not to repeat the crime again. Even saying that now it seems so basic, it is something even a child could fathom. Exactly what can you learn from a punishment that ultimately ends your life?

Many people I find seem to forget themselves when presented with an individual, who undoubtedly has committed a very serious crime, whom we then call for their blood, death, public hangings and such like. Yet where is the justifying in the call for death and violence from those who deem themselves on the correct side of the law, be it judicial or moral. The mistake we make is we are very apt to leaping to the obvious in being so outrageously reactionary without anointing a level of intellect and thinking outside of the box. This is even before realising how vengeful we are as a race of people.

The Death Penalty and the call for it is wrong, inexcusable, unjustifiable and serves no useful purpose in either reducing crime or tackling the causes of crime in the first place. The right to life is inalienable and being that we have no choice to have been born, it serves as a self appointment to God like status to invoke a method to deprive an individual of their life via a judiciary system. After all, should the criminal once tried and found guilty of murder, in no matter what circumstances, be then sentenced to death, it really propels the ideal of two wrongs not making a right, plus, the judge has just made a hypocrite of himself as he has just ordered to have happen to another human being what that human being did to someone else. Yet we hide behind the excuse of “justice” to essentially OK this.

In worst case scenarios, when the wrong person is sentenced to death, killed, but then pardoned moments later, what use is that to the victim or the victims remaining family. The Death Sentence is not only barbaric it is also reflecting a very crude methodology of correction in what is the 21st Century. The years a criminal can wait for their eventual death can be as long as over a decade, in which time the mental anguish I think would break even the most strongest and tolerant of minds. Not to mention the moments before the event and to have their sentence put back again and again. Just imagine for a moment being innocent, on death row, facing that scenario everyday knowing your innocent and seemingly ignored as you live in a world that now bays for your blood, yes this world, this time, which we are and what we have become as a race of people.

Now try to imagine that scenario if you are as young as 14 years old, child inmates on death row is a reality in China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Uganda, Iran and America also perhaps many other places worldwide that we don’t know about yet. We march in protest against the illegal wars in our time yet seemingly the former be justifiable and goes almost unreported; similar to the current story circulating the internet of Amazonian Tribes burying their own children, alive, in the event of defects or imperfections, which might I add, is being covered up by Brazilian Authorities, supposedly out of respect for tribal culture. Which I think is an utter abomination.

Yet still there’s an even darker side to this, criminals to whom are acquitted only to kill again later but got away with it in the first place due to the ability to pay out for expensive and highly effective legal Council. It reminds me of a saying I once heard,

“Capital Punishment means those without the Capital get the punishment”

Therefore I conclude that there must obviously be an alternative to the Death Penalty. I believe that with a much larger investment and more effective coordination toward large scale prison factories, if trading into the tertiary sectors, thus reducing running costs, we could see an end to the Death Penalty globally. Prison Factories exist today but are often ignored by the authorities and are poorly run; especially in places such as China. Perhaps what we need here is a fresh perspective in dealing with violent criminals and/or repeat offenders. I think the American Government would be good to pave the way toward such an investment, as they have recently announced they are out of the recession; this investment would not only see the Death Penalty eventually abolished, but realise the long term effectiveness and benefits from compiling such a scheme for a modernised system for corrective punishment, which if producing a product or products that can be traded into a tertiary sector, it would literally after time, pay for itself. After all an overcrowded prison that produces nothing is always far more expensive for the tax payer be it death row or otherwise.

The Death Penalty, an expensive and barbaric standard in a 21st Century world, there are potential alternatives. Isn’t it about time we started exploring them?

By VisionGhost © 2009