Politics D9

Page D9

Politics The Town Voice Balanced

The Failure of the Death Penalty

By Arlon Staywell
RICHMOND — For whatever reason there appears no evidence to support the belief that the death penalty deters crime. Perhaps some evildoers have taken control of the FBI's Uniform Crime Report and skewed the numbers somehow. Or perhaps the death penalty really does not deter crime. Perhaps it has failed consistently since 1976 when the Supreme Court re-instated it. Since 1976 states have had the choice whether to use the penalty. States without the death penalty had lower crimes rates. And they maintain them. States with the death penalty had higher crime rates. And they still do, and with no clear sign of improvement, just much worse and not so much worse.
So 32 years of statistics seem to prove that the death penalty does not deter crime. The statistics are readily available from the FBI at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm. Some eye-catching charts of the data have been made readily available to you at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. Not being the one to unnecessarily duplicate labor, I suggest you avail yourselves of those websites.
What is wrong with that picture? It does not tell us why. Why doesn't the death penalty work?
Universality Required
For the law to be effective it must be applied to all people the same. If some poeple can kill and others cannot it wears down the fundamental principle behind the law. If it is fine under some circumstances to kill, it is essential that those circumstances be very clear. The failure that we see in those states that have a death penalty is in keeping those circumstances clear. There might always be some people whose ability to grasp the concepts is so weak that it makes any attempt at clarity useless. Should it be said that the states with no death penalty allow self defense for example there might be some people out there who cannot see any difference between self defense and the death penalty. Most people should not have that difficulty. The death penalty is not self defense. Self defense means that there is an imminent threat to human life with no other choice possible than such force as might kill the source of the threat. People locked up in prison are not an imminent threat to anyone, however much they would like you to believe otherwise. This is not a difficult concept to grasp.
Save Money
The second strongest reason, addressing the first later, that believe people in the death penalty is that it saves money. They don't want to feed, clothe and house anyone, much less a criminal. Consider also that at the lower end of the economic scale are law abiding citizens whose lives are not much better in many terms than prisoners' (another problem for another discussion). Is that not a very good argument for a death penalty? It may seem so, but consider this scenario. A homeless man sees your fence needs repair and offers to help for $80. You know you can fix it yourself better for only $35 and in less time. Which is less expensive? Clearly you should fix the fence yourself. Even if you gave the man $5 to just go away you would still save $40. Prisons exist because the benefits outweigh costs. However much prisons improve the lives of criminals or not they improve the lives of others. Many fail to count that benefit when counting the costs. Most crimes do not deserve any death penalty at all and prisons are needed for that. Repeatedly arguing that prisons cost too much does not help matters. It weakens the effectiveness of the threat of prison and can cause larger prison populations and even higher costs.
When the Emotions Rule
The strongest reason that people believe in the death penalty though is their emotional response to particularly heinous crimes. In Arthur Miller's The Crucible about the Salem witch trials young girls are believed to be associated with the witchcraft. It is so vile a thing that the death of the devil worshipers seems the only satisfactory answer to the authorities there. The presentation of particulary vile crimes is often used even today to win people to belief in the death penalty. The truth is that most crimes are not the result of witchcraft or insanity nor are the very few instances of witchcraft or insanity easily deterred by the death penalty. It is likely that satanists believe in a sort of death penalty whether society does or not.
Defense of Life and Defense of Property
It is legal to kill in defense of life almost the world over but in Virginia it is not currently legal to kill in defense of property only. I suppose the main reason for the difference is that property can be recovered but lives cannot. Also different is that the protection of property depends much more on others because we must be away from our property many times. It has often been watchful neighbors who discouraged theft. Even when they weren't watching, the possibility that they might at any time was quite discouraging. If criminals were killed over thefts, that might weaken the network, make people reluctant to report suspicious activity, lest someone get killed over a misunderstanding or perhaps trifles. The weakening of the network could harm others as well as perhaps those who have killed in defense of property alone. Yet people who favor killing in defense of property might still believe that in general property is safer if killing in defense of it is allowed. There are arguments to both sides. And new technology can make quite a strong safety network even with some of those challenges to it.
Remember as noted above that self defense and the death penalty are not the same thing.

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