The Irrelevancy of Death-Penalty Deterrence Studies
Nov 29th, 2007 by nick
In response to an article in the Colorado Springs Gazette similar to this one in the New York Times, I wrote the following letter to the editor of the Gazette,
The front-page article, “Death Penalty Debate Revived” (November 18) missed the point. According to the article, recent scientific studies have shown that executions have a deterrent effect on murders. Many death penalty proponents appear to be using these results to bolster their arguments, and even some death penalty opponents seem to be swayed by the evidence. They’re avoiding the real issue: State-sponsored murder is fundamentally wrong. Beneficial side-affects of an act can’t magically cleanse its inherent immorality. It’s fundamentally perverse for our society to believe that we have the right to kill certain people. If we executed drivers who speed, we’d probably reduce the number of deaths due to traffic accidents. But that wouldn’t obviate the immorality of those executions. Similarly, putting people to death rather than incarcerating them for the crime of murder is intrinsically immoral, whether or not it deters future crime.
Unfortunately, because the Gazette published another letter from me recently, and has a policy of not printing letters from the same person within 45 days, they won’t publish this one.
[…] resources that could go toward solving pending crimes.” While that may be true, I’ve pointed out in the past that arguments like this miss the point; the death penalty is inherently immoral. Why can’t we […]