Many people believe the death penalty should not be abolished because it is way of getting rid of society’s most dangerous criminals and that it is a form of revenge for the family of victims of crimes like murder. But that notion is just wrong because sentencing criminals to death doesn’t deter other criminals from committing the same crime. Rather it is a motivation because they know they are not going to face the maximum punishment for their crimes. They know they are not going spend the rest of their lives in a nasty jailhouse paying for the crimes they committed; to them death is an easy way out. That is why most people who go on shooting rampages kill themselves before the police get to them. An example is Adam Lanza from the Newtown school shooting and Aaron Alexis from the navy yard shooting in Washington.

I believe the death penalty is extremely wrong and inhumane; it is murder disguised as punishment. If murder is wrong then why does the federal government kill people who commit murder. What is the difference between someone who commits murder and someone who punishes that person by killing that person. People need to realise that the death penalty is the government’s way of taking the lives of people without facing punishment. Let’s look at this possible scenario: if my friend was murdered and I found out who did it and kill that person as form of revenge, I could face a possible death penalty for saving the government some money and time by killing that person myself. How does that make sense?

Another argument people usually make for the death penalty is that it eradicates the danger murderers pose to the society but that is actually far from the truth because criminals like rapists and armed robbers also pose a significant amount of threat to the society. Rapists pose a significant amount of threat to the society because they could turn into murderers but they are the criminals that are often left roaming the streets. A rapists can be sentenced to ten years to prison and when they return from prison they usually go back to the streets and do the same thing; sometimes they even take the lives of their victims because they know their victims could identify them. This is the same with armed robbers, they usually murder victims they feel could identify them. When criminals come out of jail, most of them are even more angrier and commit worse crimes than what sent them to jail. The death penalty is not really the shortcut to keeping our streets safe.

I believe the death penalty should be abolished because it is inhumane. Instead of sentencing people to death, the government should sentence dangerous criminals to life imprisonment with hard labor so that they are working to support the economy not take away from it and at the same time paying for their crimes.