Being poor should be a crime and repeat offenders should be given the Death Penalty

Thank you imabench for this debate and I shall begin. Contention 1. The insaneness of this proposition. As of 2011, the poverty line was $22,350 per year (for a family of 4). (1) Now according to the United States government, 58.5% of people will spend at least a year below the poverty line some time in their life (1). My opponent is basically advocating that we send about 60% of the United States population to jail…simply for being poor. Not only does this overcrowd our overcrowded prisons, it will have the effect of, obviously, sinking the United States economy simply because there will be no workers to work. My opponent may argue that these people do not fit the second parameter, but, what reason does a person go beneath the poverty line? Lack of income. If someone is refused work then, they have no income, thus, they sink beneath the poverty line. Let's say none of these people can get work after getting out of jail, would my opponent justify the killings of 60% of the United States population? Contention 2. Cruel and unusual punishment) How is it not cruel? You are punishing people simply because they may have grown up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In many poorer areas, there are no jobs to be found. Thus, it is simply a cycle of poverty and depravation in these poorer communities. The "United States Supreme Court "set the standard that a punishment would be cruel and unusual [,if] it was too severe for the crime, [if] it was arbitrary, if it offended society's sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty." (2) So let us see, is the punishment too severe for the crime. Sending someone to prison based upon their economic status seems to be way too severe. I mean prison could maybe help some people, but, how prison is better than say, more and cheaper trade and technical schools to help these poorer people learn a trade without having to go to prison. Does it offend society's sense of justice? Yes, if you define justice as getting what you deserve, then, the poor deserve to be helped and raised out of their economic pit. Furthermore, you will be offending a good majority of the population, 60% to be exact. A person should not to be punished for something which inherently is not their fault. Poverty is a cycle, a community is poor, crime moves in, and it stays poor until outside influences change this. You need an influx of jobs and opportunity. Would a less severe penalty than death or 3 years in prison do the trick? I mean prison is a horrible place, I hope my opponent will not argue this with me, why wouldn't a single punishment for one year even two years accomplish the same goal? Why 3.5 years? Why kill them at all? The only reason my opponent cites is for criminal reasons. At the very least, this year or two year in prison will show a person that if they get into drugs, if they kill a person, they are going to go to prison, for a much longer stretch. Contention 3. Will not change anything As my opponent says, "Areas that are poverty ridden correlate with areas that have extensive amounts of reported cases of rape, murder, alcoholism, smoking, doing drugs, etc which all end up costing the government more money than other areas. Poverty doesnt actually cause these things, instead these are often ways for people to try to escape from poverty due to lack of better more legal options." Let us say person X kills person Y. Person X is poor. Will person X not go to jail for the rest of his life simply because he killed person Y? Replace murder with any crime you would like, they are still going to go to jail for that crime. The only way to change things is increased police force presence. One of the most dangerous cities in the United States, ironically, is Washington D.C. according to a Florida State University study there was "a 15 percent reduction in crime in the police district where the White House and National Mall are located when additional officers were on duty during high terror alert days… Overall, crime was down in the city by an average of seven crimes a day or 6.6 percent" (3) Let's look at another city, New York "The police measure that most consistently reduces crime is the arrest rate of those involved in crime, the study finds. Felony arrest rates (except for motor vehicle thefts) rose 50 to 70 percent in the 1990s. When arrests of burglars increased 10 percent, the number of burglaries fell 2.7 to 3.2 percent. When the arrest rate of robbers rose 10 percent, the number of robberies fell 5.7 to 5.9 percent. In the case of murder, the decline was 3.9 to 4 percent; in the case of assault, 2 to 2.4 percent; and for motor vehicle theft, 5 to 5.1 percent." (4) A study by the California state government found that crime dropped due to eleven main factors the number one was the strength of law enforcement agencies. (5) More police leads to less crime. There is a better way rather than just throwing people in jail for growing up in the wrong place. Refutations 1) Poverty can be related to Criminal Activity Notice the word "can" what about those poor people who are not committing violent crimes, should they go to jail also because of those who do? Furthermore, crime is not directly linked to poverty it is in fact, linked to "irrationality. People who have biased beliefs about practical matters, and/or exercise poor impulse control, are likely to screw up their lives across the board. … a lot of crime can be seen as objectively self-destructive behavior that happens to have an unusually large amount of collateral damage." (6) In order to lower crime you also must raise educational rates as "Low education rates, by the way, are also linked to high crime rates." (7) Would it not make more sense to keep people in school to lower poverty and thus crime rather than throw them in jail for being poor? The poor people are not the problem, it is the cycle. Do you think a poor person would rather be poor or rich? I'd say rationally they would want to be rich. Therefore, why not allow them to become rich instead of throwing them in jail? Raise education rates, lower crime, and this gives more incentives for businesses to want to invest in an area. 2) Jail == back on track Not really. According to the Pew Center on the States, "slightly more than four in 10 offenders return to prison within three years, a collective rate that has remained largely unchanged in years" (8, 9) In many cases, prison is not successful in rehabilitating prisoners which shows it is not the best option to help someone get their life back on track. 3) Death eliminates offenders Aside from this method being completely cruel, over 40% of people released from prison revert back to crime. Prison is not the best option to rehabilitate criminals seeing how it fails a lot of the time. My opponent suggests we kill people because of the faults in the system. 4) Society benefits from it. (I will address this more later on..running out of room) My opponent really has not provided any plan for getting rid of poverty. I mean if all poor people are committing crimes they would be getting arrested for these crimes anyway. Arresting people because of their status in life, which many do not get to choose, is cruel and wrong. Sources 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://www.fsu.edu... 4. http://www.nber.org... 5. http://ag.ca.gov... 6. http://econlog.econlib.org... 7. http://capaassociation.org... 8. http://www.usatoday.com... 9. http://i.usatoday.net...