Do you agree that life imprisonment is better than death penalty?

Question

I need this for our debate tomorrow.

Answer 1

If you have a debate tommorow, you should have researched this a long time ago.

I have a debate in honors english in mid to late March and I already have to prepare for it.

Life imprionment is far cheeper than the death penalty. The avg. cost for a executions goes to over three million, while life imprisonement adds up tp around 800,000.

One of the major problems with the judical system and captial punishment is that the lawyers representing convicts on death row and enept. A man in NC was executed innocently because his lawyer missread the appeal date and no provided evidence was ruled as none.

Considering DNA testing has only been used in investiagations for about the last two decades, eye witnesses have to provide descriptions, which can easily be wrong, thus the jury finds the so called fellon, who had nothing to do with it, guilty and they die for nothing.

There is the ethical question if people have more thinking abilty than a vengeful gorrilla. Should really killing the killer be suitable punishment? Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Or are people more mature than that?

The judical system often gets tied up in appeals and even if a murderer is sentenced to death, he's not dying for 30 years or so at least. This costs money to inprision them until the appeal prossses is over, and sense the judical system allows infinate appeals, they can be retried and retired, often resulting in a miss trail and a new one is needed. Takes time, money and effort. Would be easier and cheeper to just put them in for life.

Ethnic backrgound is also relaevent. A black man killing a white man is 10.5% more likely to recieve a death sentence than white killing white. Unfair, biased juries are responsible for this.

Answer 2

Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is far better than the death penalty. Wouldn't that be awful. Stuck in and 8 x 8 room most of the time. I really can't imagine how awful that would be. As has been proven, people that have been on death row and had a bad attorney have once they've gotten a decent lawyer been found to be innocent. Also, how about him becoming a good citizen & changing his ways--if hes outright killed he can't change his bad ways.

Answer 3

The principal of '"an eye for an eye", should not pertain to a civilized society in the 21st century. Cost is not a pro death argument either, as it costs more to keep an imate on death row for an average of 15 years, accommodating their appeals etc, than it does for the average lifer. Still, the death penalty could become just, on the same day the the justice system becomes infallible and free from social and racial prejudices.

Answer 4

I think the problem with the death penalty in the US is the simple fact that it is not intimidating and it is more costly to execute someone than it is to keep them alive in prison for the rest of their lives.

I am all for the death penalty in cases where it is warranted, such as a 1st degree murder, airplane hijacking and rape of a child (which it is pretty much limited to now). I would also like to see the death penalty extended to include habitual criminals who are constant repeat offenders of crimes that warrant prison but not necessarily death, such as rape, child molestation, armed robbery and attempted murder.

In order to make the death penalty a better form of punishment than anything else, the process of conviction and execution needs to be sped up. It takes 13 years on average, from the time the crime was committed to the time of execution, and that is just way too long. If all trials and appeals could be completed within a year of the crime, and execution set for immediately after the final appeal, that would add a lot of teeth to the death penalty and make it a much more significant punishment.

Keeping a useless human, who has committed an atrocious crime, alive in prison is a disservice to tax payers throughout the country.

I would like to see the main form of execution go back to being hanging (as I think it is the most effective way to kill someone when it is done properly), and I also think executions should be broadcast to the public, as they are in many other countries. People need to be able to visually see the ultimate consequence for a heinous criminal offense.

Answer 5

In the movie (and book!) Papillion one of the punishments was solitary confinement. Prisoners were put in a cell below ground where they only had access to light once a week when they were shaved. If this were the replacement for the death penalty, at least if it were proven that a person did not commit the crime at some later date, they could be released. No dout there would be psychological damage, but they would not be killed.

Answer 6

Our prisons are already filled to the maximum capacity. I know that it takes a long time to sentence the death penalty, but it is costing tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars for every inmate in prison. If every criminal had life imprisonment we wouldn't have any room for all of them. Unless we sent them to the moon or something, but that would cost billions. So yeah I don't have any problem with the death penalty.

Answer 7

anyone who answers life has never been to jail.
for me it depends on the crime. death can be kind when life in prison is the other. if someone murdered my child tomorrow, and we caught him, i would want him to stay in prison, because it's a dark, horrible place. people always question why people try to escape prison so often, or why so many inmates commit suicide.
in prison you have no freedoms, the food is ****, you run the risk of being injured at the littlest thing or because you're in the wrong spot at the wrong time, people are fighting and shouting constantly, you have officers watching you all the time, you can barely go to the bathroom without being watched, you get searched if you leave the unit (and not a cute little pat down, but you have to strip down and do a cavity search every time and walk through a metal detector, and there's no hygiene to speak of, if i gave you a plate of the food from jail you wouldn't touch it, and you have to wear county clothing. and if you get to talk on the phone, or see anyone, it's supervised.
now what would you rather do, live with that for your entire life, every single moment, not to mention getting old and sick there, dying there, not able to be taken care of by your family. or would you want to be there for a few weeks or months and then be killed by an injection that you just fall asleep and thats the end of it? if i was given the choice of going back to jail for the rest of my days or lethal injection, give me the injection.
but if he did something real messed up, let him rot!

Answer 8

I think life in prison is something that everyone gets accustomed to really easy. You get 3 meals and a bed, you don't have to work, you get free TV, honestly life in prison is a better life style that alot of people have around the world. At least with the death penalty we the society do not have to pay for the people in jail with our taxes.

Answer 9

Depends on how you look at it. Morally, life imprisonment is better. Logically life imprisonment costs taxpayers a lot of money, they pose a danger of escape, now days you run the risk of some lawyer that knows how to work the system getting them paroled in 10 years.

Answer 10

(Given the wrong conditions) The worst punishment for a person is to be incarcerated in a degrading, depriving and inhumane Facility.If this is the case, any convict might choose to die soon or escape from a hellacious place than be incarcerated and suffer for life, then making life imprisonment, not better. And sadly, a large percentage of the world's correctional facilities are of these conditions.