Certain convicted sex offenders should be executed

Thanks, PRO, for instigating the debate challenge. I intend to argue for restorative justice in contrast to my opponent's retributionist stance. Retributive "justice," if it can be called justice at all, is cruel, inhumane, and ineffective. Rather than dividing my essay into separate parts, I intend to address my my opponent's claims within my constructive case. 1.) The death penalty represents a perversion of justice. According to restorative justice theory, a criminal forfeits his rights to the same extent as the rights that he violated. In exacting punishment, the victim is entitled to receive full compensation for their loss, inconvenience, and suffering. But no more. The punishment must fit the crime. There is no justification for murdering a criminal purely for revenge; taking his life cannot restore the damage he has done. 1a. - Additionally, capital punishment is applied inconsistently. Studies show that minorities who commit the same crime as their white counterparts are far more likely to receive a death sentence.[1] Blacks were even more likely to receive the death penalty if their crime involved a white victim. The problem is compounded for poor defendants who can't afford decent legal representation. 1b. - It is impossible to discount the possibility that innocent people will be executed. At the height of the Salem Witch Trials, Increase Mather famously wrote "it were better that ten suspected Witches should escape, than that one innocent Person should be Condemned."[2] The death penalty is singular not only in its harshness but in its permanence. Simply put, it is not for man to take what he has not the capacity to restore. An innocent man condemned to life imprisonment can always be freed should new evidence emerge vindicating him. 2.) The death penalty is costly, ineffective, and largely counterproductive. It's a little known fact that, due to the lengthy appeals process, sentencing a criminal to die actually costs more than sentencing him to life without parole. The average cost difference is $90,000 per inmate per year.[3] In Maryland, they found that the costs exceeded $37 million per execution.[4] 2a. - Taking revenge on a criminal does nothing to ease the suffering of victims or their families. Kathy Dillon lost her father, a police detective, to a shootout. Ten years later, her boyfriend of four years was murdered as well. Kathy writes: "Executing the man who murdered my father would not have brought me peace. Whereas some advocates of capital punishment claim that an execution brings 'closure' to surviving loved ones, most of us feel that there is no closure. I'll always miss my father; an execution would never change that." Ms. Dillon continues: "Far from bringing closure, a capital prosecution may do the opposite. After a death sentence is handed down, the legal proceedings drag on for years with the outcome left uncertain at best. The emotional wounds of victims' family members are opened again and again."[5] 2b. - Given this cost, it's difficult to justify the death penalty when it has no proven deterrent effect. States that allow the death penalty average 7.9 murders per year for every 100,000 people while abolitionist states average only 5.1.[6] In states where the death penalty has been reinstated after having previously been abolished, murder rates have either remained stable or actually increased.[7] 2c. - In fact, there is good reason to believe that applying the death penalty to sex offenders would have the opposite of a deterrent effect. A wise criminal, knowing that he would be sentenced to death anyway, would have a backwards incentive to murder his victim as well so as to lessen the likelihood of his being identified and prosecuted. 2d. - Executions are needlessly inhumane. If it serves no purpose, either moral or practical, what reason, then, is there for the continuance of such a barbaric practice? 3) Penal labor is a superior alternative to the death penalty. It has several advantages, both morally and practically. Hard labor forces the criminal to repay the damages done to society, thus fulfilling the demands of my value criterion: restorative justice. As I pointed out earlier, imprisonment is also less costly than execution. Finally, a lifetime of hard labor forces the criminal to live with his guilt throughout the course of a harsh sentence with no chance of parole. The resolution is negated. -- References -- 1. Baldus, David C., George Woodworth, David Zuckerman, Neil Alan Weiner, and Barbara Broffitt. "Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview, with Recent Findings from Philadelphia." 83 (1998) : Cornell L. Rev. 1638 2. "Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men." (1693). 3. http://www.ccfaj.org... 4. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... 5. http://www.mvfr.org... 6. Uniform Crime Reports, annually, 1990 et seq. 7. Cochran, Chamlin and Seth. "Deterrence, or Brutalization?" in Criminology (1994).