Should Capital Punishment (Death Penalty) be Re-instated?

Capital Punishment was abolished in England back in 1965, however it is still an issue that most people have an opinion on whether it be for or against.  And once again the debate has come to the forefront of British media, as a result of Paul Staines who is a writer for the Guido Fawkes political blog and has lunched the Restore Justice campaign.  He calls though for something slightly different, demanding that the death penalty only be brought back for murder cases involving children and police officers. The child part of this is understandable; it takes you true criminal mind to kill a child, but a police officer this comes across purely as favouritism. Without trying to undermine the British police, who I am sure we all have much respect for, what makes them more important than any other adult in the country. Regardless of this though, is bringing back the death penalty the correct way to solve rising crime rates and overcrowding in prisons.  

 The English Legal system has become a joke throughout the world; people appear to get a longer sentence for fraud than they do for murder. How can this be correct? A life sentence no longer means a life sentence, instead a ten to fifteen year sentence. A twenty year old that commits murder could quite easily be free from prison by the time they are thirty-five and able to still have a full life. All the while a family is suffering at the loss the person in question has caused. Just to add insult to injury British prisons are known to be a soft touch compared to other countries. For some prison is a better option than life on the outside.

 Is it not right then, that something needs to be done to change this? If somebody you knew was murdered wouldn’t you want the murder to suffer whether this be living in harsh prison conditions or the death penalty. One thing is for sure you wouldn’t want them to have a comfortable ten years in prison before being released. But if the death penalty was to be brought back in, exactly what measures should be taken to make sure innocent people don’t die. Under no circumstances would it be right to bring in any change to the law that would result in innocent people dying.  It would be better to let 99 guilty men walk free than one innocent man killed for a crime he did not commit.

 Not everybody has the same view though when it comes to capital punishment, evidence has shown that for many hard core criminals the prospect of the death penalty does not act as a deterrent. Add to this the fact that there is always the chance the defendant could be innocent; many feel the government needs to look at alternatives to reduce crime rates. For example more criminals being given community service as opposed to a prison sentence. In many cases crimes have a huge affect on the community and this is a way of giving something back to those who have suffered, while the criminal is punished.

 The new E-petitions have given the public the chance to speak out and make their voices heard and if even one of the many petitions put up to bring back the death penalty gets 100,000 signatures the government will have no choice but to debate the issue in the House of Commons. One thing is for sure though, if there was to be a change in the law it would have to be debated further than just Britain as being part of the EU forbids a country from allowing capital punishment.