The Benefits Of Capital Punishment

In this day and age, capital punishment continues to be a topic up for heated debate in the United States. This extreme practice of the law of retaliation, more known as an eye for an eye, has been questioned time and time again in regards to its constitutionality and still exists in several of the states in America. Although the death penalty may have been efficient decades ago, the problem with capital punishment is that it is no longer a beneficial method of solving crime in the Contemporary Era. Capital punishment ought to be abolished in the United States for it holds an incapability of deterring crime, is not cost effective for the economic society, and all the while holds minimal relevance in modern times. The majority of criminals …show more content…
Although the death penalty is still practiced in the United States, it requires an arduous process as to ensure the possibility of executing an innocent person is near to impossible. Time is money and as death penalty cases take much more time and resources, there is no doubt that it is much more costly than cases that were tried non-capitally. Life sentences may be expensive costs to pay, yet those who support capital punishment do not realize that "death penalty costs are accrued upfront, especially at trial and for the early appeals, while life in-prison costs are spread out over many decades" (Dieter, "Capital Punishment Is Too Expensive to Retain"). It is similar to many circumstances in life such as costs for college tuition, it is much more advantageous to pay in increments over the course of four years rather than to pay all costs upfront. Even the nation 's police chiefs frown upon capital punishment, "ranking the death penalty last in their priorities for effective crime reduction and rating it as one of the most inefficient uses of taxpayer dollars in fighting crime" (Dieter, "Testimony on the Cost and Inefficiency of Capital Punishment"). To abolish the death penalty the United States would undoubtedly save millions of dollars per year, money which could be put to more efficient use to improve the overall economic health of the country. With the newfound money saved people would be provided with better access to health care which would lead to a substantial decrease in the poverty of the United States, in turn reducing the murder rate much more efficiently when in comparison with executions. Executions are no longer prevalent in modern society and as society has advanced to become more civilized, so has the methods of dealing with