why is the death penalty a good thing?

Answer 1

It's not.

Answer 2

People don't really understand the facts or the purpose of the death penalty. Fact: it costs more to put someone to death than it does to have them serve life in prison. That is fact repeated time and time again by many criminal investigators who are for the death penalty, i.e.John Douglas, Robert Ressler. People on death row are allowed so many appeals, I think 7, before actually being put to death, which costs tax payers millions of dollars every time a criminal appeals a death penalty sentence. It only costs a few thousand a year, around $30,000, to keep them alive in prison.

The purpose of the death penalty is not to put an end to crime. Killing one killer out of a hundred does not end the crime. It does hopefully deter people from thinking about crime. But it is there to help others, usually family of the victim, to feel as if justice has been served. It is a punishment to the criminal...period. For those who have not been a victim of a serious crime like murder, it is easy to think that people should just forgive and forget. But it is entirely possible you may feel different if you are in that situation, which is why we should not judge those who are and who support it.

Answer 3

Do you mean that you think it's a good thing, or are you expecting answers from people whom you assume support the death penalty ?
It does not look like it, from the answers that you have received so far that many support this view.
Are you a Christian ? if so have you read the bible story about the woman who was about to be stoned to death for adultery ? Christ said to them, you that is without sin cast the first stone.
He was against the death penalty, and so it seems that many others are also.

Answer 4

Well that's a touchy question.
My opinion:
Why do people find it alright to put a wild dog that has bitten some one, to death, but not alright to put to death a wild human that has brutally slaughtered many people?

Humans are arrogant, they tend to think that all humans, no matter how insane, should be kept alive, and that no other specie is as important. I disagree.

Why is the death penalty a good thing?
To control the overpopulation of "wild" humans.

-Edit: Be sure to read bloomquist324s post above mine.

Answer 5

Believe it or not, there do exist people who are a danger to society, who cannot be reformed, and are a threat to everyone that comes in contact with them for as long as they continue living. There are also people for whom a lifetime of imprisonment is much more cruel than simply killing them.

I have known people of both stripes. And you have undoubtedly heard of some of them too. Prisoners who beg not to be released because they know that they will commit crimes again and don't want to. Suspects who commit 'death by cop' rather than be taken to jail.

I not only think it is not wrong to kill these people, I think it is wrong NOT to kill them. Society benefits in the former case, and the individual wishes it in the second.

Of course, I'll be the first to grant that most of the people killed by the American justice system fail to fall into either category. That is not the fault of the death penalty as a punishment, but of the system that implements it.

Answer 6

No of course not. The death penalty is a false sens of precedence and a false sense of justice, blinded by people who think that if someone is killed, the problem is solved.

Answer 7

There are some crimes which are too terrible to allow the person to live, especially when it's a crime that will probably be repeated, like child molestation. we should be very sure the person is guilty, but a person who commits mass murder or similar crimes should not have any chance of committing those types of crimes again.

Answer 8

I am dead set against it (No pun intended), but the only benefit is that the perpatrator of a crime is in no danger of commiting the same crime ever again.

Answer 9

who said it was a good thing? all that is happening is the government is killing murderers. that make the government a murderer also, but since they seem above the law, they can get away with the murder

Answer 10

one pro that people state is that the prisons are overcrowded and it costs taxpayers millions of dollars to feed and house convicted felons...and some people can never be reformed.

Answer 11

It's not a good thing. It's murder, and humans are judging someone as a side of beef.