nding "NO." Consider this, the US is the onlyWestern nation that still allows the death penalty, and we also have one of the highestcrime rates. During the 1980s, death penalty states averaged an annual rate of 7.5 criminalhomicides per 100,000, while abolition states averaged a rate of 7.4 per 100,000. Thatmeans murder was actually more common in states that use the death penalty. In anationwide survey of police chiefs and sheriffs, capital punishment was ranked last as away of reducing violent crime. Only twenty-six percent thought that the death penaltysignificantly reduces the number of homicides. The theory behind the deterrence doctrineis flawed itself. Murderers do not examine risk/reward charts before they kill someone.Being a criminal is inherently irrational...life imprisonment ought to deter a rational personitself. Besides, no criminal commits a crime if he believes he will be caught. The next issue that deserves some observation is that of capital punishment beingeconomically correct, meaning will it save the U.S. and its taxpayers money. "The deathpenalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to lifeimprisonment" (Winters, p.99). A study informed that reintroduction would involve afirst-year cost of more than $11 million. And the Miami Herald reported that Florida, withone of the nation's largest death rows, has estimated that the true cost of each execution isapproximately $3.2 million, or approximately six times the cost of a life-imprisonmentsentence. The last issue that should be observed is that of innocence. Are there reallyinnocent people on death row? At least twenty-three people have been executed who didnot commit the crime they were accused of. And that's only those that we know. Andhere lies an inherent danger of capital punishment...when we execute an innocent person;the real killer is still on the streets, ready to victimize someone else. But when an innocentperson i...
