Here is the patience and the faith of the saints” (Revelation 13:10). If laws are needed to restrict conduct for the sake of society, if threats of punishment are needed to control violations by those tempted to break the law, and if threats remain credible only if carried out when violations do occur, then retribution must be inflicted as threatened on those guilty of crime (Van den Haag, 49).“When laws are made and punishments prescribed, the requirements of order must prevail; when laws are applied, justice according to law should prevail, tempered by charity. All three principles must ultimately coalesce in the criminal justice system” (Van den Haag, 50).Even the murderers themselves agree that, if convicted, they should suffer the same consequences as their victims. On January 5, 1993, three-time child killer Westley Allan Dodd was hung in Walla Walla, Washington. Dodd had chosen hanging, over lethal injection, as the method of execution because he had strangled the youngest of his victims, a four-year old boy, and considered it fitting that he should die in a similar way (Kronenwetter, 102). The ultimate supporting quote from the Holy Bible is “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6).People that commit crime, or kill, will do it again. Alternative forms of punishment do not work. Abolitionists, those against the death penalty, state that life in prison is an alternative to death.“Life imprisonment as opposed to death not only puts prison staffs and fellow prisoners at risk from those who have shown that they are willing to kill, but the ordinary citizen as well” (Gottfried, 35).Abolitionists of the death penalty propose life imprisonment as an alternative in the hopes of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation does not work and life imprisonment carries with it the chance of parole. Retentionists, those for the death penalty, say that rehabilitation ...
