The Death Penalty should be Abolished

I propose simply that the governments of countries should take measures to abolish the death penalty for all people and for all crimes. That means that instead, for especially hoeneous crimes they should pursue top gun alternatives such as genuine life improsenment (literally until they die). This is suitable because they will not be a threat to the public and because they will be deprived of most freedoms and live the rest of their lives in a tough and unpleasant way thus punishing them as well as giving a sense of justice to their victims. So, now on to why I believe we should do this after defining my policy statement. I will propose three simple and logical arguments for why the death rate penalty is bad and thus why it follows that we should pursue its abolition. Firstly, the death penalty is wrong because it allows for innocent people to be murdered by the state. No matter how strong the burden of proof is as claimed by opponents of my position, countless numbers of times innocent people are wrongly convicted of serious crime and in certain countries are then murdered by the state for those false crimes. Let's be clear - our criminal justice systems, like any institution, have flaws and thus make mistakes or are corrupted. Juries are mostly very good at rightly judging evidence but ultimately they, like even experienced judges, are human beings who are subject to bias and opinion and make mistakes. In the case of death penalty cases, mistakes are very serious because they can kill people and thus mistakes cannot be corrected and so much more pain and suffering can be endured by both the wrongly accused and their families and friends. In these cases it only creates more victims. Now, often our institutions have inherent flaws. A good example would be institutional racism. We know this exists for sure within the police force. As can be shown by many examples of biases and acts of violence upon black men in custody. Furthermore, considering African Americans make up almost 50% of the American prison population despite being only 13% of the population and that Black people are 7 times more likely to be convicted wrongly of murder than white people this suggests that racism is a major factor causing injustices in legal systems. As a result, these obvious biases do mean that people are wrongly convicted and murdered on the grounds of racism and other forms of bigotry. Therefore, considering that my claim is true, in order to prevent innocent life from being snatched by the state we must abolish the death penalty as I propose. Secondly, the act of state sponsored murder is wrong and thus the death penalty must be abolished. When a state kills somebody for committing a crime what does that actually achieve? It can be an emotional reassurance to some victims of crime but what use does that actually provide to society in general. Cannot victims feel a sense of justice when a criminal faces a life of punishment and deprivation? There is no evidence that killing even guilty people actually acts as a deterrent to further support my claim that it achieves nothing. Isn't it surely more useful when a murder for instance spends their life in prison with the possibility of realising the immortality of their crime and thus feeling remorse and real guilt and sorrow. Not only is the death penalty useless but it is cruel. Many victims of the death penalty take hours to die. Recently a case emerged where a murderer was executed and the third poison injected into him was the wrong one. When this was given (instead of potassium chloride) it took the victim a much longer and painful time to die. This is wrong because human suffering is universally wrong. As humans we should aspire to progress morally and thus we suffering for suffering's sake is contradictory to this principle therefore rendering it defunct and thus the execution of criminals immoral. Finally, the death penalty is immoral because not only does it now victimise the families of the convicted criminals but because it diminishes the morality of society. As a civilised society we believe generally that the killing of human life is wrong except in exceptional circumstances whereby someone is about to kill someone else for instance. We believe that a civilised society is one that is not barbaric and does not kill people when there is no actual measurable use of killing them. Furthermore, human life is in sacred and special and killing is cruel mainly because it extinguishes that individual's ability to contribute to society after they have been reformed in prison. Many prisoners convicted of crimes such as murder in countries where there is no death penalty often show huge remorse and end up changing their lives, becoming reformed people and thus setting about to lead a moral life. This is not possible under the death penalty. People's contribution to the universe is destroyed by a society which deems itself to oppose the removal of life unless it is essential to the betterment of that society. And, appeasing the fiery emotions of traumatised victims is not essential to the betterment of society. For these reasons, the death penalty is both useless, actively cruel, victimising and limiting of the potential for positive contribution to our society. My final argument is that the death penalty is wrong because it brutalises us as human beings. Capital punishment provides a tangible and yet unacceptable link between justice served by the law and violence. Let's be clear. Violence is wrong in all cases. Even when we do justify violence it is when we are trying to stop more violence and so it's not a contradiction since my claim is that we should pursue the path of least violence and since the death penalty is not a deterrent then it, by my premise is immoral. Moreover, it perverts the notion of justice served by the law and ultimately by our societal notion of universal morality. Statistics show that the death penalty leads to a brutalisation of society and an increase in murder rate. In the USA, more murders take place in states where capital punishment is allowed. In 2010, the murder rate in states where the death penalty has been abolished was 4.01 per cent per 100,000 people. In states where the death penalty is used, the figure was 5.00 per cent. These calculations are based on figures from the FBI. The gap between death penalty states and non-death penalty states rose considerably from 4 per cent difference in 1990 to 25 per cent in 2010. Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report, from Death Penalty Information Center Disturbed individuals are often angered or believe that violence is more acceptable since the most fundamental form of authority (the state) leads by example in murdering criminals and thus these people are more likely to commit murder. It is also linked to increased number of police officers murdered. For the reason that the death penalty brutalises and lowers our societal goals of moral progression, we should abolish the death penalty. In conclusion, the death penalty represents everything that really is immoral. It murders innocent people, it unnecessarily deletes lives in often horrendously painful ways and worst of all, it underpins a notion of acceptable brutality which, as has been shown, perverts our society and corrupts our justice system. Before Keith Tharpe was sentenced to death one juror called him "a nig**r". This injustice is symbolised, embodied and perpetuated by the status quo. So, let us be brave, exercise deep and bold moral courage and say firmly that even the worst people should never be murdered by a society to which they pose no threat. I urge voters to support the Abolition of this brutal and barbaric system of state-sponsored cruelty and degradation.