Capital Punishment 6

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment has always been a controversial social issue. Many believe that capital punishment is necessary in order to ensure law and order in the society. On the other hand, there are people who strongly oppose capital punishment on humanitarian grounds.

The advocates of capital punishment support it for various reasons. First of all, they believe that if the criminals do not receive capital punishment, then they will continue to commit crimes and thus will destroy social peace. Imposing of capital punishment will set up an example in the society and will create fear of death in the hearts of the criminals. This will reduce crime to a great extent. Besides, through death penalty the number of sinners in the society would fall. They believe in the saying, “an eye for an eye”. The person who has snatched away the life of another person does not have any right to live. The moment he kills someone, he loses his right to life. So, according to the supporters of capital punishment, the best way to punish such sinners is to kill them in return.

On the contrary, the opponents of capital punishment also have many incontrovertible arguments against it. According to them, there is no doubt that murderers are the worst sinners and that they deserve punishment. But that does not mean that we should overlook the fact that a murderer is a human and taking the life of a human is called murder no matter how heinous the crime of that human is. The antis of death penalty believe that lifetime imprisonment instead of capital punishment is the best punishment for a criminal. This is because the wrong-doers might not have been in their right state of mind while committing the unforgivable crime. He could have been drunk, driven by strong emotion etc. Besides, there is no such proof that capital punishment has the capacity to deter people from committing crimes. For example, capital punishment is prevalent in the USA but not in the UK. Yet the murder...