what would be great main points to discuss in a research paper about the death penalty?

M

Maria

New member
I believe that we should not be spending so much money on executions and just start executing people by using a fire squad and that there should not have to be that 20 year wait period that they get to have or something like that.The main points i thought about going about are:

Cost of executions VS Life in prison without any chance of parole

The history of the Death penalty and why we have it

the number of people that die on death row compared to number of people actually executed

OR

number of people that die on death row Compared to Number of people that die Life in prison

Pros and Cons

Different Methods of execution

Rights of the inmates as far as should they have any

im a little lost on how i should approach this because i know im not supposed to state what I think please help me out and if you have any other ideas please let me know thanks
 
If your point is that too much money is being spent on imprisonment and executions, focus on the cost aspect. You'll have to also address inmate rights, as your argument is to quickly put a bullet in someone's head...you'll have to try and convince your reader that your proposal is foolproof (which it isn't -- innocent people are convicted everyday in our justice system). You'll also have to convince the reader why your proposal is humane, considering that you are proposing to dramatically increase killing prisoners, and we are the only Western nation to do so.
 
None of your ideas are particularly interesting to people who have given this idea some thought. Most civilized countries in the world (and I leave the US out of this category) have long ago done away with the death penalty. They have decided that 1) there is no way to make it humane; 2) it is not OK for the government to take the life of one of its own citizens under any circumstances and, most of all,... 3) it doesn't work.

If you want to argue that the accused criminal who is executed won't ever hurt anyone again, then fine, though this is a pretty childish argument. After all, the person incarcerated for life also won't be set loose on society. The big question is why we have a justice system at all. Is it just to punish? Most people think not. We have criminal laws and penalties to PREVENT crimes from being committed in the first place. Many people have enough conscience that they would not commit crimes in any event. Most of the rest, refrain from crime because they don't want to be punished.

Does the death penalty deter people from committing murder? Statistics (from states and countries where there is or is not capital punishment) suggest very strongly that it is NOT a deterrent.

That being the case, there's no solid argument for this barbaric act.

**My point for you is that writing about the deterrent effect of the death penalty (or the lack of it) is a perfect topic.

Best wishes!
 
I think you should first check out whether your assumptions are correct.

First of all, the costs of the death penalty have very little to do with the cost of the actual execution. The reason the death penalty costs so much is thel legal process and the costs begin to skyrocket upfront, before and during the actual triial.
 
I think you have a good start just make sure that you stick with facts that you can document and not go into whether one particular aspect is right or wrong. Another area, you might want to go into is the number of recent cases where convictions have been over-turned based on DNA evidence. Once the person is dead, it's hard to do anything if the DNA evidence later shows they were wrongly convicted. One that has also interested me is the number of people on death row that are either Learning Disabled or Cognitively Delayed.
 
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