Death Penalty

1 Pages 318 Words

Death Penalty Argument (against)

The topic of the Death Penalty has been a heated debate for centuries and now with the state of Illinois pardoning all death row inmates, I thought I would touch on the subject. This essay is AGAINST the death penalty.

The biggest argument against the death penalty is that it has shown to have tendencies of being racist. Over 80% of people on death row are convicted of killing a white person. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty more than half of the people murdered in the United States are black. Also according to the NCADP 90% of the people sought after by prosecutors for execution are either Black or Latino.

Another misconception about the death penalty is that executing is cheaper than housing the offenders in prison. Data shows that an offender taken through the process of arrest all the way through execution often costs one million dollars to three million dollars. On average the cost of life without parole is $500,000 almost half of what it costs to execute. In 1991 New Jersey spent $16 million to impose the death penalty. The next year the state laid off 500 police officers because they could not afford to pay them.
The death penalty has also not proven to be deterrence to committing such offenses as murder, rape, and other violent offences. Countries with the highest murder rates that do not oppose the death penalty are about 21.6 per population of 100,000 and the countries with the highest murder rates that do impose the death penalty are about 46.1 per 100,000. Thus these states do show that the death penalty could actually be related to increasing violence.
In considering all these arguments one could easily have a new perspective on the death penalty and change to an anti-death penalty stance....