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Capital Punishment “In 2002 at least 1,526 people were executed in 31 countries.” Throughout the years and currently in today’s society, this issue of capital punishment is one that has been strongly debated. Although both sides of this hot debate have strong arguments, the fact that capital punishment cannot be proven as a deterrence factor, that it can accidentally be inflicted upon innocent people, and the fact that it is no cheaper than life imprisonment, it is clear that capital punishment is something that should not be practiced. One of the main arguments that people who support capital punishment make is that it serves as a deterrent to serious criminals. However, this is something that has yet to be proven. Many studies have been conducted, yet without fail, evidence that proves that the death penalty serves as a more effective deterrent than other forms of punishment has not been found. For example, the United Nations recently did a survey that was conducted in order to try and find the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates. This survey concluded that “it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment.” Some studies have even found that places that do not practice capital punishment have significantly lower crime rates than those that do. In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a Preliminary Uniform Crime Report for the year 2002. In this, they discovered that in the South, which accounts for eighty two percent of all the executions in the United States since 1976, the murder rate rose by 2.1% that year. In the Northeast, where only one percent of the United States executions take place, the murder rate decreased by almost five percent. Another example of this can be found in Canada. Since they abolished the death penalty in 1976, the homicide rate has dropped significantly. The number of homicides in 2001 was twenty three percent lower than it was the year before they abolished capital punishment. Aside from all these facts and figures, many experts also agree that capital punishment does not serve as a deterrent whatsoever. A survey of experts from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association was done and showed that the large majority of experts in these groups believed that the death penalty did not prove as a deterrent to homicide. Furthermore, over three fourths of these individuals thought that by increasing the number of executions or decreasing the time prisoners spent on death row before execution would not have any deterrent effect.
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