Is Capital Punishment Effective?

Is capital punishment effective?

Any person that breaks a law is bound to be punished. Law, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is defined as “a rule or system of rules recognized by a country or community as regulating the actions of its members and enforced by the imposition of penalties.” (Oxford Dictionary, 2002) The punishment of the lawbreaker is set according to the severity of his crime and one would consider capital punishment to be the highest level of punishment. The action of teaching an individual the consequences of their actions can define punishment. How is killing an individual for their actions teaching them their consequences? In his essay, Adam Thurschwell mentions that the fact that the international law doesn’t see capital punishment as a human right violation any more than military conscription is really startling. Capital punishment is inefficient.

Change, in today’s world, seems to be a very hard concept to wrap our minds around. Not only will an individual avoid change for himself but will not let anyone around them change. The ability to reform is in all of us. Time can change people’s moral and ethical values. Considering the fact that it takes years to be executed after being convicted, the convicts have a lot of time to contemplate on their crimes and possibly change. Unfortunately a lot of people around the world still support capital punishment even when its proved time and time that convicts can change. Stanley Tookie Williams, a great example of such scenario, was convicted for multiple counts of felony murders. He was a death row inmate before being executed in 2005. Looking into Williams crimes and gang affiliations, it appears that he is worthy of the death penalty. However when one learns that he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, it completely changes the perception towards Williams. During his time in death row waiting for his execution, Williams completely changed himself. In an article in the New York Times Magazine, writer Kimberley Sevcik writes that Williams had claimed to fall in love with words after a chaplain gave him a dictionary in 1985. Williams, while in death row, began writing books warning young children away from gang life. For this advocacy work, Williams was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. If Williams had been sentenced to life imprisonment, it would have been easier for him to be released on parole. “Changes in other developmental variables-logical thinking, for example-occur in stages. Such changes are qualitative in nature.” (Wood, Wood, Boyd, Wood, & Desmarais, 2011) As Wood states in his book The World of Psychology, mental development occurs over time. Hence one can question why the law still sentences convicts to death when it’s proven by psychologists and certain cases that convicts can change dramatically. Capital punishment is an irreversible action which takes away the convicts