Penology

I have chosen to conduct on Jill McDonough’s Habeas Corpus book of sonnets. This book widely and deeply talks about the execution of several people through history and adds on how there punishments were determined. The writer Jill McDonough beautifully put historical events in a book in the forms of poems that had clear questions. These poems strongly insist and stand on the aspect of the individuals being executed due to what they stood for. This was created to ensure the reason of their death…

Since the year 1976 1,437 people have been killed by capital punishment. White: 798, black: 495, hispanic: 120, and other: 24. The state of Texas has the most executions with 537 since 1976. Six of them have been in 2016. New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Connecticut only have had one execution since 1976. Since the year of 1998 the number of executions has dropped significantly. In 1998 there were 295 and in the year 2015 there were only 49. There are five different methods of execution;…

Ernest Van Den Haag begins his article asking if the death penalty deters more than life in prison. Haag says that even though life in prison is unpleasant, it is still very different from taking the life of a person. He says that 99% of people on the death row would rather be in life sentence (Pg,392 right column). I think anyone would prefer to stay alive, but isn’t a life sentence just like the end of a persons life? They will be confined to a cell for the rest of their life. Haag also talks…

The most fearful aspect of capital punishment is the possibility of the state or government executing the wrong person. As a previous advocate for the death penalty, the argument of innocent people on death row was hard to swallow. I continuously believed in our capital punishment system and had little doubts that people on death row were innocent. However, with a little research, it became blatantly obvious that was not the case. For instance, 135 people on death row have been exonerated…

Prisoners throughout the United States are returning to a life of crime after their sentence is finished. Prison was intended to rehab its inmates; however, it is now creating more advanced criminals than what they originally entered the system as. The effects on criminals from society, prison, and the government are destructive and breed hopelessness. The United States retaining the largest incarnation rate in the world is unacceptable (Gleissner). Recidivism is on the rise and America’s…

Have you ever been wrongly accused of actions you did not take? It is estimated that 1 in 25 people on death row is innocent. In 1984, a former marine, Kirk Bloodsworth, was accused and sentenced to death for the murder and molestation of Dawn Hamilton, nine-year-old girl. In a Maryland prison, Kirk worked in a library where he read about DNA testing and requested an appeal. Mr. Boodsworth spent 9 years in prison, two of those years on death row, to later be exonerated June 1994. Kirk…

The underlying problem of the prison industrial complex will be defined through the prison industrial complex to exploit lower class citizens through capitalism, yet within the context of spiritual liberation of vipassana mediation as defined in Changing from Inside, Dhamma Brothers, and Doing time, Doing Vipassana. The film Dhamma Brothers, the internal spiritual freedom of Buddhism is analyzed within the context of prisoners of the prison industrial complex as a form of capitalistic…

The topic of the death penalty has been considered a controversial issue for over two hundred years. Numerous public figures, world leaders, and renowned philosophers have made their opinions and theories known; yet, there is no universally accepted answer to whether or not capital punishment is morally and lawfully permissible. Despite hundreds of years of discrepancies, philosophers John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant seem to agree with many aspects of the death penalty. Through the…

Justice and death seemingly go hand and hand in our justice system. When a person commits a horrible enough crime they are meet with capital punishment, other wise known as the death penalty. People who commit such crimes are portrayed as evil, soulless beings that hold no remorse for human life whatsoever. This description can be applied to most violent offenders, but what some people fail to realize that the offenders aren’t wicked monsters conjured from god knows where; they’re humans. Their…

Gary Younge’s article “Why the Gun Control Movement Fails” was very effective. Younge establishes credibility by visiting with families who lost loved ones due to gun violence. He uses emotional appeal by talking about how Kenneth Mills Tucker was killed and he is logical in his presentation of facts at the end of his article. I will now explain how Younge establishes credibility in his article. Younge presents himself as credible in his article. It is important that he is credible in this…