The Death Penalty

Many people are opposed to the death penalty, while some people like it, and others just don't care about it, or don't know about it. (The death penalty is called Capital punishment, and this is when a person is sentences to death for capital offences, like crimes involving planned murder, multiple murders, repeated crimes, rape and murder etc). There are values at stake weather a person is for or against the death penalty. Values at stake for people who oppose the death penalty are Human dignity, something that every human is born with. Who gives another human the right and power to kill another human being? No one. People that are innocent can be killed too. People are not perfect, ergo the supposed justice system is not perfect or without flaw. When a person tells you not to hurt someone by hurting you, it's wrong, its retribution. That's exactly what the death penalty does.

The death penalty is cruel since any person can be put to death at the word of some people. Life in prison is cheaper than the medical costs and legal costs of execution too. The money that goes to execution is money of tax payers! Everyone that pays taxes, which is the majority of people in America should have a say on this.The people who are for the death penalty are saying that justice is better served, the victim's families that are suffering finally have closure, and it helps stop over crowding and over populating the jails and prisons.Although those things are true, there is also morals in this! The person getting that death sentence could be anyone in the world...Violent crimes should be punished, but not with something that would be considered a crime if someone else did it, like killing. The word CORRECTIONAL in correctional facilities is there for a reason, to help people get better. People should not be killed. The worst that should be done is to indefinitely detain someone. The death penalty does not rehabilitate, so when people commit crimes now they just have a much more violent state of mind, like they might as well cause as much chaos as possible because the government is going to kill them anyways; Because of that crime isn't deterred, people are just tougher. Killing is unChristian like. Christians are supposed to forgive, not kill. There are better ways to combat violence than killing. If a person is so bad that they cannot be around other persons then put them in an environment that is that way, but do not kill them. The human life must be respected because God created everything and ultimately he has the power. No one person has the right to say 'I don't like that you did this or that, so I'm going to kill you'. It is not good to let 100 guilty people go free rather than convict one guilty person, unless their conviction includes the death penalty because that person just needs to be helped and not killed. It is not acceptable to keep killing people especially since some of the people are found innocent after they are dead. That's just plain rude, discouraging, enraging, and not nice. The Catholic teaching says that “bloodless means should be used wherever they are enough to protect the common good. “ I completely agree with this teaching, and i feel like it needs to be expressed in many more places. With the death penalty this teaching definitely needs to be applied because there is no need to kill and take away lives of people when other things can be done to handle the situation in a better ethical manner.