First Steps - Capital Punishment

Being a basically conservative guy, I was once in favor of the death penalty! But a while back I happened to take a college class titled "American Society in the 20th Century". Obviously this class was pre-2000. For my term paper I chose the issue of the death penalty. I found out it was more expensive to the tax-payer to put a man to death than it was to imprison him for life. I also found out the last public execution was conducted in 1936, since then crimes punishable by the death penalty have risen dramatically!

How have my views changed? If the purpose of the death penalty is to exact punishment on the guilty, then putting the guilty to death just lessens the punishment to the time from conviction to the carrying out of the penalty. But life in prison ensures the guilty is punished every day of his natural life. If the purpose of the death penalty is to be a deterrence to violent crime, then making executions private have nullified the deterrence public executions once had. As a side note; the abolishment of the chain gang and work farms has also had a negative impact on the crime rates in all states that once used them. I remember when I was 6 years old (1963 in SC) visiting my grandmother, the chain gang came down the road cleaning out the ditches on both sides of the road. The sight of 20 men in each team, chained at the ankles, down in the ditches while prison guards rode horses with shotguns drawn filled my little brain with a new found determination to do good, and formed in me a fear of the consequences from commiting a crime that has lasted a lifetime!

I don't want to debate the moral virtues of the death penalty or the implications of the death penalty within our fallible system of justice. I just want to state my opinion of the deterrence value. To truely deter violent offenders, the death penalty if used, must be public and swift. In Saudi Arabia, public justice (beheadings, hand removals, stonings, etc.) is carried out on Friday mornings in the town square with camel auctions following in the afternoon. The crime rate in Saudi Arabia is virtually non-existant! So, in closing, let's bring back public executions, or do away with them all together!