Better Society

The first line of the opposition’s arguments seems to be a bit dramatic. They propose “capacitating” convicted murderers. The very thought of “capacitating” murderers for reasons specified by the oppositions sends chills down my spine. The opposition has said that prisoners have families who will suffer and that we should not take an eye for an eye. They have compared murderers to drug addicts to show that if we are to keep murderers in prison with fears of them committing crimes again, we should keep drug addicts too. They have also written about how keeping the convicts in prison will lead to the acceleration of detestation experienced by the convict. In the very first part of the case that they highlighted the fact that these murderers are “products” of the very society we are from. We agree. But yet it seems that there is a drastic difference – they murdered people, whereas most of the rest cannot even think of committing murder. These “bad products” of the society are made only due to existing bad elements within the society. Criminals, themselves, are such bad elements. If left in the society, these murder convicts will lead to the degradation of the society around them. By removing the bad elements of the society, just like we remove malignant cells from a patient, we make the society a better place since the “products” of the society are less likely to be criminals. The opposition also seems to be quite worried about the effects on the family of the convict, especially if the convict is a parent. What we do not understand is that if a parent actually cared about his/her children why s/he would commit a murder knowing that he would not be able to interact with them properly for the rest of his life. Cases of an actually responsible parent becoming a murder convict are extremely remote. In most cases, the children might be better off without the murderous parents guiding them. The last thing we would want is the child becoming a criminal too. And so here I can refer back to the aforementioned argument – taking out the bad elements will make the society a better place. As for the comparison that the opposition has made with drug addicts, we think it is a completely unfair comparison as drug addicts who have not committed a crime or murder does not pose an immediate risk to the general people in the way that a proved and convicted murderer does. If drug addicts are released, they may become drug addicts again, but that does not mean they will harm others. However, if murderers are released, they may kill again. As for human rights, they have said that since capital punishment is against human rights, life imprisonment is too. Considering the basis of the argument, we might say that “if life imprisonment is against human rights, the imprisonment of people for long periods is too”, and so on. We believe that life imprisonment is not against human rights because the person is getting shelter, food and is not being tortured. His basic human rights are not being violated. He is only being confined to an area as a punishment for committing a crime. Rather, we are preventing him from violating the right of people to live.Is it really humane to let a convicted murderer go around free and put innocent lives at risk? Besides this, in response to our “deterrence” argument, the opposition has said that keeping convicts in prison would anger them and would not deter them in the future (To quote: “… that indefinite confinement does not deter the person from committing crimes in future”). They seem to have misunderstood our argument. Firstly, these convicts will never go outside the walls of the prison, so we are not worried about whether he is angry or sad. What we talked about was the deterrence of future crimes because other criminals become afraid of receiving a minimum sentence of life-imprisonment and crime rates drop. In the presented case, the opposition has brought in sayings that try to make the society a better place. For example, “An eye for an eye will make everyone blind”. What they do not seem to show comprehension of is that these old sayings are not fitting here. In the context of our arguments, if we do what has been proposed in the motion, we would not be taking an eye for an eye – instead, we would not only be preventing the original eye-taker(murderer) from taking more eyes(incapacitation), but we would also make other criminals afraid to take eyes(deterrence). In this way, eye-takings will be reduced and the society will be better, filled with people who have brilliant eyes, and not blind people.