capital punishment.doc

Capital PunishmentAs a kind of punishment,capital punishment may be the most brutal because it takes everything of a person.The most precious thing of a person is the life.Started from the ancient time,every country had its special way of capital punishment.For instance,in the ancient China,Qin dynasty, a person who had committed a crime would be tore apart by five chariots.And as time flows,every dynasty takes decapitation as the main mean of capital punishment.Generally speaking,capital punishment can be an effective way to prevent people from commiting a crime.However,does capital punishment really necessary? In China, capital punishment is currently administered for a variety of crimes,but the vast majority of executes of either aggravated murder or large scale drug trafficking.China also executes the highest number of people annually,although other countries (such as Iran or Singapore) have high execution rates too.This was seriously called into question by some western countries,they thought in the modern society,human rights stay in the first place,everyone has the right to stay alive,no one can take it away even though the government.So it comes to the question we have mentioned above,Does capital punishment really necessary?Or we should get it out of our law?Different people hold different ideas,this also causes a fierce argument.Some support while the other against,anyway, both of the two sides have their appropriate reasons. As a society generally improves and become increasingly civilized and democratic, there will surly appear a trend that capital punishment is considered as brutal and should be abolished. Opinions on this issue differ sharply. A debate over whether capital punishment should be abolished has been going on and aroused extreme concern among all walks of life. Here are the reasons for agreeing to abolish the death penalty. Those who agree to abolish capital punishment also have the very reasons to demonstrate the defects of punishing people to die. First, as nobody is empowered to deprive others of their lives, we cannot decide one will live or die either. This is to say there is no difference between the criminals and us. Capital punishment is extremely inhuman in this sense. What is more, murderers committed crimes for different motives, yet after all the reasons for murders are social. Therefore everyone in the society should assume the responsibility to grant them a help hand and an opportunity to reform. Maybe it is the inerasable inequality or darkness that drives them to become evil and totally destroys their life. Finally they hold that capital punishment is of backward a feature which is antipathetic to a civilized society. It is a kind of homeostasis revenge, as if human lives can be made up for easily, while counteracting guilt at the same time. Such practice not only preaches down the value of lives, but also encourages the ferocity of human beings. Undoubtedly, the argument cannot come to a conclusion in the short term. Although that capital punishment will probably be abolished is inevitable because the society keeps developing; it is impossible and unrealistic to carry it out now when taking Chinese conditions into serious consideration. All in all, what the judicial system is supposed to do is to improve the structure of criminal law and be wary of capital punishment. The death penalty, or be called the capital punishment, is born from the criminal law from the very beginning, the death penalty is the most ancient penalty both in penalty system and in the human history. Its one of the most severe penalties which deprive the criminals life as punishment. As it is powerful enough to deprive ones life, discussions about whether or not to abolish the death penalty never stop. Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters crime, is a good tool for police and prosecutors, improves the community by making sure that convicted criminals do not offend again, provides closure and legalized revenge to surviving victims or loved ones, and is a just penalty for their crime. However, those who support the capital punishment also bring their reasons, as they are shown below. Have you ever imagined that if there isnt death sentence, what the world will be like? In the Chinese language, theres a proverb which goes like this: A merciful angel frightens no devil. The capital punishment is the last weapon to prevent potential criminals. China is a country which holds one fourth of the worlds population. Nowadays our country is still not safe enough, partly due to the lack of policing. If the penalties are loosen, China will be in a complete mess, with so acute confrontational sentiments between the rich and poor and so uneven distribution of properties. Not only wont our goals of a better-off society be achieved, but stability, our basis of national development will also be threatened. Death penalty can frighten the criminal offenders not to break the regulation. Moreover it definitely points at violates, the very kind of person. According to some information on the Internet, surveys have long shown that a majority of people are in favor of capital punishment. Many public who are interviewed say that the death penalty is not imposed frequently enough and most of them believe that its applied fairly. And at the same time, our country hasnt stepped into the developed country. Those who are sentenced to life imprisonment need money to be alive. At present we cant afford to support all of their lives. Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters crime, is a good tool for police and prosecutors, improves the community by making sure that convicted criminals do not offend again, provides closure and legalized revenge to surviving victims or loved ones, and is a just penalty for their crime. Opponents of capital punishment argue that not all people affected by murder desire a death penalty, that execution discriminates against minorities and the poor, that it does not deter criminals more than life imprisonment, that it encourages a culture of violence, that it is more expensive than life imprisonment, and that it violates human rights. Also, some people oppose capital punishment due to their religious belief. It is frequently argued that capital punishment leads to miscarriage of justice through the wrongful execution of innocent victims. Many people have been proclaimed innocent victims of the death penalty. Public opinion In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, and Western Europe, the death penalty has become relatively unpopular, with the majority of the population opposing it (except in the United Kingdom). However certain cases of mass murder, terrorism, and child murder occasionally cause waves of support for reinstitution, such as the Robert Pickton case, the Greyhound bus beheading and so on, though none of these events or similar events actually caused the death penalty to be re-instated. Between 2000 and 2010, support for the return of capital punishment in Canada dropped from 44% to 40%, and opposition to it returning rose from 43% to 46%. The Canadian government currently has absolutely no plans to reinstate capital punishment. Abolition was often adopted due to political change, as when countries shifted from authoritarianism to democracy, or when it became an entry condition for the European Union. The United States is a notable exception: some states have had bans on capital punishment for decades (the earliest is Michigan, where it was abolished in 1847), while others actively use it today. The death penalty there remains a contentious issue which is hotly debated. Elsewhere, however, it is rare for the death penalty to be abolished as a result of an active public discussion of its merits. In abolitionist countries, debate is sometimes revived by particularly brutal murders, though few countries have brought it back after abolishing it. However, a spike in serious, violent crimes, such as murders or terrorist attacks, has prompted some countries to effectively end the moratorium on the death penalty. In retentionist countries, the debate is sometimes revived when a miscarriage of justice has occurred, though this tends to cause legislative efforts to improve the judicial process rather than to abolish the death penalty.A Gallup International poll from 2000 said that Worldwide support was expressed in favor of the death penalty, with just more than half (52%) indicating that they were in favour of this form of punishment.In the U.S., surveys have long shown a majority in favor of capital punishment. An ABC News survey in July 2006 found 65