Capital punishment
Capital punishment is the legal killing of somebody as punishment for their
crimes. Over a hundred countries have abolished capital punishment in
the last thirty years, and the resistance is increasing in country’s countries
that still perform the capital punishment. Despite these numbers the
question is still being talked about whether the Netherlands should
introduce the death penalty or not. But capital punishment should not be
introduced in the Netherlands as it leads to the death of innocent people,
it is unclear whether it is effective against discoursing warding off criminal
behavior and it is bad for the reputation of the Netherlands.
In the first place there is always a chance that the victim appears to be
innocent after executing the death penalty. According to some researchers
approximately 4,1% of the victims might have been innocent. (PNAS,
2014) And this number only includes the cases they discovered to be
false, there might be other victims who will appear to be innocent. And the
death of innocent people is never justified.
Another line of thought on the death penalty is that it is not an effective
way of warding off criminals. Because there is no connection between
crime rates and whether a country carries out capital punishment or not.
The crime rate in the United States where they execute the death penalty
is for example 1.96533 while on the other hand the crime rate in the
Netherlands without capital punishment is 803.000. (Statistica, 2020).
These results show that introducing capital punishment in the Netherlands
do not have additional value to the society because it will not lower the
crime rates.
Lastly, introducing the death sentence in the Netherlands will give it a bad
image towards the rest of the world. Nowadays many countries are
receiving critics because they capital punishment. Or even worse and are
getting boycotted, like for example Saudi-Arabia (De standard, 2020). This
means that some counties do not trade anymore with countries that
violate human rights such as using the death penalty. The results from this
bad reputation the Netherlands will get if they have the death sentence
would be catastrophic for the economy of the Netherlands.
Some say that it is much more expensive to have a prisoner with a lifelong
sentence than use the death penalty. Because they need food and water
and maybe other things, so it costs money to keep criminals lifelong in
prison. However, the cost of executing the death penalty is much higher.
The cost of a capital punishment is approximately 3,2 times more
expensive than lifelong imprisonment. (The Balance, 2019) These high
costs have mainly to do with the high legal costs that are made for the
long trials and investigations. After seeing the evidence, this idea can be
refuted completely.
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