Student Corner Capital Punishment Should Be Abolished
By Sohn Hyung-kyung
The debate over the morality of capital punishment has divided people for years. Some say it is cruel for governments to kill, while others believe that the death penalty ensures that the most dangerous criminals are kept off the streets.
I can make arguments for both sides and have mixed feelings about the issue, but if I had to choose a side, I would say that I am not in favor of the death penalty.
One of the reasons why I am against capital punishment is because there are many instances in which inmates on death row are later found innocent when new evidence surfaces.
It is horrible that a person who is in prison for a crime they did not commit would have to die for it, while the real criminal walks free.
It is understandable that the families of victims would want to see justice served, but cases where governments wrongfully execute innocent men are simply not acceptable.
The act of executing criminals shows the governments sinking to the murderer's level, which means they are committing the same crime as the murderer, which is just as bad.
I believe that lawbreakers should be held fully responsibility for their actions, and that society should be responsible for punishing them.
But capital punishment most likely does not discourage violent acts because people that commit horrendous acts of violence are likely not mentally stable to begin with.
In the case of murderers, receiving the death penalty probably would not phase the criminals because death is something they are used to, and so they are most likely are not afraid of it.
Killing someone in any form is cruel and inhumane. Family members of victims should have the right to see the person responsible for the death of their loved ones punished, but not necessarily by the felon's death. Killing another human being is simply not the answer to heal a grieving family; it only adds to the cycle of murder and violence.
There have been many methods of execution - hanging, firing squad, lethal injection, gas chamber and the electric chair - but none are less barbaric than the others. There is no way to kill someone that is not barbaric.
The death penalty in Korea has not been implemented for eleven years due to the issue of human rights. Murder cases, however, have increased by a remarkable thirty-two percent over the eleven-year period since the government stopped executions. But is it simply the suspension of the death penalty, or could it be the times we are living in that accounts for this increase?
Capital punishment is still a hotly debated subject in many countries. As of December 2007, 102 countries have abolished the practice of capital punishment, sixty-four still practice it, and in between are thirty-one states, like Korea, that maintain capital punishment but do not execute those sentenced to it. Some may argue that killing criminals so they cannot repeat their crimes is the answer to a safer world, but there are other ways to keep them off the streets. In short, I believe that capital punishment should be abolished worldwide.
Sohn Hyung-kyung is a student attending Kyungnam College Univesrity of Information & Technology in Busan.