Essay Example on More than two-thirds of the countries in the world have removed the death punishment

According to the Amnesty International's report in November 2017 more than two thirds of the countries in the world have removed the death punishment from their legal system the latest being Mongolia where the capital punishment has been completely abolished In the US 31 out of 50 states are allowing capital punishments as of 2017 Additionally the numbers of death sentences and executions have been noticeably reducing in recent years according to data Death Penalty Information Center 2017a However the debate about whether the death penalty should be abolished or not still remains This paper shall discuss 3 main reasons why the punishment should be eliminated including cost uncertain efficacy and the unfairness toward poor people First of all there is a common myth about the death penalty being cheaper than other punishments However data have shown the complete opposite The death penalty costs considerably more than less severe penalties for example the life sentence Tennessee spent 48 more on death penalty cases than life punishment cases Morgan 2004 In Maryland the gross cost for one case of the death penalty is three million dollars about 3 times more than cases without the death penalty Roman et al 2008 In Kansas it cost an average of 400 000 dollars per death penalty case about 4 times higher than other cases Kansas Judicial Council 2014 Capital cases often have a more lengthy and complicated process than the others the cost is higher as a result 

Even when the process is shortened the cost remains more expensive Abolishing the death penalty can save states lots of money This money could be invested in other beneficial fields for the states such as child education victim assistance or better crime prevention The death penalty is indeed costly However is it worth the money being invested in or in another word deterrent This is a very common argument regarding the effectiveness of the penalty The capital punishment has the most deterrent effects amongst the available penalties The logic of the deterrent effect is that if the penalty can deter crimes there should be fewer criminals in the area therefore the crime rates should be lower However it seems that in states with the capital punishment the murder rates are higher than states without the penalty according to statistics In details recent data from 2010 to 2016 showed that in states where the death penalty is not available the rate was 18 28 lower than states where it is still applicable Death Penalty Information Center 2017b In fact so far there has been no conclusive data to prove the actual deterrent effect of the death penalty According to a report in 2012 by the National Research Committee written by Daniel Nagin and John Pepper flaws have been found in research on the efficacy which led to such results