On balance, Death Penalty as a punishment has a negative impact on the society

Thanks again to Con. One of the fundamental aspect to be clear on this debate is the deterrence effect, before going over the recidivism, and the justice aspect. Con accepted that the studies measuring the deterrence effect are flawed. However, he continues to cite the studies, presumably because of the logic behind it. He proposes that people follow their incentives, and hence they should technically lower the crime rate. Also, he points out that since we are going to err anyway, in favour of one or the other study, it would be beneficial to err in favour of death penalty rather than against. I respond to the argument on three levels: There is this implicit assumption in Con’s argument that all the literature that exists on the phenomenon is in his favour. That is untrue. The research conducted by Radelet and Akers (1996) and Michael L. Radelet and Traci L. Lacock (2009) that surveyed leading American criminologists concluded this lack of deterrence effect based on the existing research at that time.[1] Notice that the people surveyed were either fellows of American Society of Criminology, recipients of ASC Sutherland’s award, OR were president of ASC between 1997 and the present. Thus there’s a relatively high level of credibility. On the contention that people follow their incentives, and that one off statement; that is something that the NSC report already addressed, as I’ve already stated. Flawed models. There are a myriad of reasons why a person commits a crime. A terrorist guided by the aura of ‘eternal reward’. For some, death brings freedom. Vinay Sharma, for example, one of the perpetrators of the ghastly 21st December rape in India, asked for death penalty since he was ‘scared of imprisonment’.[2] Jodi Arias, after being convicted of murder, said that she’d prefer death penalty over ‘spend(ing) the rest of my natural life in one place”. ” Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani terrorist who carried out the 26/11 Mumbai attacks demanded the state to kill him, rather than imprisoning him.[3]. Please note that I’m not making an argument for no deterrence impact of death penalty, I’m merely stating that the arguments used by my opponent to forward the deterrence impact are fallacious. As for the country specific data, [4] “For 2011, the average Murder Rate of Death Penalty States was 4.7, while the average Murder Rate of States without the Death Penalty was 3.1” I actually responded to this in the previous round. The trend has been consistant. a k a Negative impact on the society. Next, recidivism. Con states that the lowest recidivism rate is an argument for capital punishment, since that relates to them following their incentives. Which would make sense, if it was not for the fact that these are the people who have already committed murders. And were imprisoned for it. And they didn’t commit those crimes again. I may be going out on a limb here, but I believe it points out to the fact that many of the murders are committed in a fit of rage, or as revenge, and the prospect of death is a cost they are willing to take. Con then accuses me of not providing counter examples, which was perplexing. I can provide examples of people who were arrested for committing murders, and didn’t recommit murder(?), but I already provided statistics for proving the point. Con misunderstood the ‘give out death to everyone point’ he thought I made. I’m not advocating DP to everyone, I’m stating that IF a person was granted life imprisonment EVEN when he could be granted capital punishment, that implies that the mechanism to hand out death penalty (which Con admits is quite rigorous) bypassed him. This is a cost, an anomaly. It doesn’t really prove anything. One can stop recidivism by a life imprisonment without the possibility of a parole, which effectively rules out any communication with the outside world. DP ALSO does that, true, but with an added cost of killing innocents and setting a precedent. Removing recidivism is impossible because of assymetric information. Breaking out of prisons, again, isn’t a norm. The prison escapes were a mere 0.5 per 1000 in 2001, for example. [4] Escaping from jails is an extremely insignificant outlier- and doesn’t really strengthen any argument for death penalty. Even if we entertain that argument, states can save millions of dollars by substituting death penalty by life in prison. The number is $ 11 million a year for North Carolina[6] $90,000 per year per inmate in California [7]. In Garden states before abolition, the cost over 23 years was quarter bln $. And the number of executions were zero. Death penalties are a huge drain on resources, and the cost saved by abolishing them can be very effectively used to improve the security problem in any country. Even in poor countries. Life imprisonment: Con contends that I did not argue against the logic of his argument here. That if there was no death penalty, people would focus their attention on life imprisonment, and succeed in abolishing it. The assumption here is that it is impossible to find a middle spot, and that because EU deems LWOP immoral, every country with DP abolished would find that too. There is just no evidence of that, most of the countries which abolished Life imprisonment were either colonized or culturally influenced by Spain or Portugal, which is decidedly not true for the rest of the world. About the fact that the average life sentence handed out has been reducing, which is untrue. [8] For violent crimes, it has actually been increasing in UK, which was the example my opponent gave. [9] Defence Futile: I’ll break it down. Limited imprisonment implies that a person has done a crime, is punished for it, but is fit to be released in the public after a set time. The number of years in prison for a robbery, for example, is less than the assault, so you need more time to correct for assault. With LWOP, however, you are assured you WILL spend the rest of your life in prison so you are not fit to be released in public, ever. Death penalty achieves the same thing; you won't be released in public ever, so from the society’s POV it is exactly the same, except the state sponsored judgment on the validity of your life. True, there would be differences in the judgment in any system, and hence inherent gradations of crimes that would lead to intrinsic devaluation of certain crimes, but that devaluation is the basis of granting DP. This answers his second contention too. There’s no addition in the severity here from societies POV, just an abstract notion of eye for eye, which is why it is futile. Innocence: Con argued that the number of innocents being wrongfully convicted is going down (not becoming 0) because of improvement in technology. However, it is but one of the reason for wrongful conviction. Poor lawyers, false witnesses, withheld evidences, false confessions, are still present. DNA evidence is available only in a fraction of capital cases. The following list points out at the haziness and arbitrariness of the judgment process.[10] B. Con overlooks the dichotomy between life with and without parole. LWOP is equivalent to death penalty from the societies POV, without the inherent judgments and innocents being killed. Also, I apologize but I couldn’t find the stats for non death row releases in the given link. However, we DO know that post DNA, there have been 311 exonerations, out of which just 18 had served time on death row. Thus there is an underestimation of the impact of a technological advance on non death penalties here.[11] But more importantly, the number of releases are bound to increase once DP is illegalized, as I stated previously. In closing, death penalty adds no more safety to society than LWOP, systematically devalues life AND does lead to killing innocent people. Sets up a precedent for others to be killed for same level of charges, increasing the false convictions. (Something I realized my opponent didn’t address). Aka a net negative impact to the society.