Death Penalty Saves Lives, Say Studies

I’m one of those trogolodytic conservatives who favors the death penalty. One of the reasons I do is because it’s seemed kind of a given that if you applied the death penalty regularly and as consistently as possible, you’d deter people from committing those crimes that could get the death penalty. There’s always been, in my mind, a clear difference between threatening a person with a life sentence in prison and death. Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to argue that point with the “well, look at it this way…” method which isn’t exactly the most convincing debate style.

Now, though, there are serveral studies that have been done over the past few years which strongly suggest that the death penalty really does have a deterrent effect. One study has found that between 3 and 14 lives were saved every time someone was executed for a capital crime. That number moved toward the high end of the scale when death sentences were carried out with a certain amount of vigor.

I’m not suggesting that we increase the number of capital crimes, but I would think that the studies warrant a clear look at whether the reasons not to execute criminals are worth the potential loss of life the studies suggest could otherwise be saved. I’m willing to hear the arguments from the anti-death penalty side of the discussion, but I think those arguments got a lot harder to make.

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Category: The Good Old US of A