The Observer, April 25, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 26
Death penalty debate depends on purpose of punishment
To the Editor:
[Last] week's opinion articles about the death penalty ["Checks and Balances"] did not touch on the real debate over capital punishment. The real debate that faces America is about our justice system as a whole. We must decide the purpose of punishing criminals before we can dole out sentences.
If punishment is meant to be a deterrent, then sentences should reflect deterring future criminals. In such a case, the death penalty would seem appropriate as a warning against the most heinous of crimes.
Others believe that punishment, however, is about justice; healing wounds in the moral fabric of society. This opinion holds that society should not tolerate murderers. By putting the worst criminals to death it would be felt that the great wrong of murder has been righted by an appropriate response.
If punishment is instead meant to rehabilitate criminals to prevent them from committing crime again, then the death penalty should only be used against criminals who cannot be rehabilitated. In this case, sentencing would be dependent on the criminal's mental state, and not the actual crime committed.
Before we can debate whether the death penalty is an acceptable form of punishment, we must first debate our reasons for punishing criminals. While we can agree with any combination of philosophies, it would be wrong to judge criminals according to different standards.
While one may argue against the death penalty because it statistically is not an effective deterrent, you must also then evaluate our minimalist sentencing against underage drinking, because it obviously is not an effective deterrent either. The debate about the death penalty cannot be resolved without a clear understanding of the purpose of punishment.
John Field
Undergraduate student
