How the U.S. Deters Crimes

                One argument in affirmation for the death penalty is that it deters crime. This is completely false in so many ways. As evident in states that have the death penalty. Murders still occur and thrive even in the states with harsher death penalty regulations. I believe that this strictly goes against what most people believe. We naturally assume as humans, that if the punishment is bad enough no people would want to risk getting that punishment. However, it actually has no effect on crime unless it is that it increases violent crime. I had the chance to study this over the summer and found that states in which the death penalty have higher murder rates than those that do not. Same goes for countries, but I will discuss that in a later blog.

                Deterrence is actually quite the opposite of what the death penalty does. The death penalty information center offers murder rates for all states and some of the results are shocking. The information shows that the average murder rate for a death penalty state was 4.7, while the average murder rate for a state without the death penalty is 3.7 (deathpenaltyinfo.org). This shows that the death penalty does not deter crime essentially. It is not all to blame for the higher murder rates but it could be a contributing factor. It also goes against many arguments that it deters crime, because in essence it does the opposite.

                This has shown up on a different scale as well including countries that do not have the death penalty also have lower murder rates. I believe that  the death penalty does not deter crime at all, so why do we have it? That’s one of the largest arguments on support of it. If we didn't have the death penalty people would kill people… however, people still kill people even though we have the death penalty. It is somewhat upsetting to believe that we as a society are not willing to re-examine the death penalty as a whole to see if it is really that necessary at all. I think that if we looked at it in depth we would realize that it is not that great of a punishment. More people are dying because of it and it crowds the prison just like many other punishments. It will take effort and time, but my goal is to inform people about the mistakes and flaws the death penalty has brought forth. I want to put an end to the corruption and misinformed public audience.