Life Imprisonment is a Good Alternative to Capital Punishment

LIFE IMPRISONMENT IS A GOOD ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

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Can life imprisonment be a good alternative to death penalty? The issue remains unresolved. Even the US Supreme Court that had abolished ‘Death Penalty’ reversed its decision when new and less cruel methods of execution were introduced.

Why does a society punish its members for certain acts that are offensive and unacceptable to its laws and codes? This can be a starting point of exploring our dilemma about death penalty vs. life imprisonment.

It is argued that fear of death deters people from committing crimes, and the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influence.

The American death penalty laws have invited ire and ridicule of human rights activists everywhere, including in the USA, and Courts in most democratic countries, including India, have been very sparing in pronouncing death sentences in the ‘rarest of rare cases”. Yet, crimes of murder and rape and the cruel manner in which they were carried out, at times, make ordinary citizens support and commend death penalty and believe that fear and intimidation of capital punishment shall keep other citizens from violating the social and normative codes of their State and society.

But there are contrary views and arguments, according to which capital punishment does not deter crime and death penalty is not necessary. Countries that no longer have death penalty have not experienced an increase in the number of murders. Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland and Belgium have not carried out executions since the early part of the century, yet these countries have not experienced a rise in crime rates. But the retributive value of capital punishment dismisses the question of deterrence. Deterrence works only if forbidden acts are illegal as well as immoral. So the easily frightened will not break the law, but “the fearless will break the law, the irrational will break the law, and all others will break the law”, it has been argued.

Capital punishment is retributive justice, and murder rates bear no logical correlation to the death penalty’s deterrent value. There are no actual statistics about the deterrent value of capital punishment as it is impossible to know who may have been deterred or not deterred from committing a crime.

If someone is thinking of committing murder and is aware that he will be released because of early parole, then it will not deter any future crime from happening.

Most criminals would ponder before committing murder if they knew their own lives was at stake and, it is argued that because very few people are executed so death penalty does not work satisfactorily as a deterrent. “During highly publicised death penalty cases the homicide rate is found to go down but it goes back up when the case is over (Bailey).”

According to some researchers “executions maximize public safety through a form of incapacitation and deterrence. Incapacitating a person is depriving him/her of the physical or intellectual power. Executing a person takes away the capacity of, and forcibly prevents recurrence of violence. Deterrence is the act or process of discouraging and preventing an action from occurring. The possibility of execution, thus, gives a potential pause in the thought process of the murderer, using fear as an incentive for preventing recurrence or quite possibly the first occurrence of murder.”

Opponents of the death penalty argue that although it is said to exist as a crime deterrent, in reality it has no effect on crime at all. “Modern supporters of capital punishment no longer view the death penalty as a deterrent, but as a just punishment for the crime. Previously, the deterrence argument put the burden of proof on death penalty advocates, but recently this argument has become less effective as in recent years the appeal of deterrence has been supplanted by a frank desire for what large majorities see as just vengeance.”

The opponents to death penalty argue that criminals who are in the “business” of killing make sure that they do not get caught; they skilfully concoct plans to make sure they are not suspected of criminal activity. A person who gets caught for killing another individual is usually someone who did not plan to murder in the first place. These individuals fall into the “crimes of passion” category. Crimes of passion are defined as unlawful acts of an individual which are unplanned and erupt as a result of a fit or rage or anger. These illegal actions usually stem from drunkenness or a short term loss of logical thinking, which can be attributed to anger. The death penalty would logically deter crime, but the problem is that most murderers are unplanned and are not a result of logic.

During the 1930s the federal government, under the direction of Jack Gibbs, investigated the effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring serious crime. The results of Gibbs investigation is that capital punishment did not deter. However, during the 1970s, Prof. Isaac Ehrlich found out through his research that capital punishment did deter but no one else besides Ehrlich has come up with the same results. The conclusion that researches have drawn up during the past decade is that the death penalty does not significantly have an effect on serious crime, one way or the other.

Another reason that many people are against death penalty is that they feel that many a times innocent people are wrongfully executed, all in the name of justice, even though there are many safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing death penalty.

Abolitionists of death penalty want the procedures of punishment more humane and victim-oriented. They argue that the offender be required to compensate the victim’s family with his/her own income from employment or community service. To that end, the offender has to be kept alive. By working, the criminal also “pays back” the society. For the imprisoned criminal there is no need of monetary compensation for his work. Money is of no value in jail. An example cited in this behalf is the case of Leopold and Loeb, both nineteen years old when they committed “The Crime of the Century” in 1924—kidnapping and murder of a fourteen year old boy just to see what it was like. They were not awarded death penalty but sentenced to life imprisonment. They worked at hospitals, taught illiterates to read, created a correspondence school, made important contribution in the World War II Malaria Project, and wrote a grammar book. “An inestimable amount of people were directly helped by Leopold and Loeb; both of them making a conscious commitment to atone by serving others”.

Abolitionists also oppose capital punishment as it is cruel and extraordinary. The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution condemns cruel and unusual punishment and the abolitionists find it handy to quote in support of their view. However, the US Constitution was drafted when capital punishment was widely practiced and it was not specified as wrong or cruel or unusual. The framers of the Constitution mostly endorsed capital punishment, as also the philosophers of the time.

Opponents of death penalty point out that expert after expert and study after study have emphasized the lack of correlation between the threat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crime. Also, the belief that execution costs less than imprisonment is false. The cost of the apparatus and maintenance of the procedures attending the death penalty, including death row and the endless appeals and legal machinery, far outweighs the expense of maintaining in prison the tiny fraction of criminals who would otherwise be slain.

“Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of an uncivilized society, immoral in principle, unfair and discriminatory in practice. It can deprive completely innocent persons of life because legal procedures involved are not foolproof. It has no purpose and no effect.” (American Civil Liberties Union National Office 2-16-95).

Opponents of capital punishment contend that the death penalty demeans the moral order because it is cold, premeditated homicide. It lowers the state and raises the criminal to moral equality with the social order.

In view of the above arguments and counter-arguments, and dispassionately considered, life imprisonment with some added social purpose appears to be a better alternative to death penalty.