There are often various debates over whether capital punishment for serious crimes such as murder are morally permissible, both arguing for and against it. I hold the stance that it is morally permissible and will further be arguing and explaining as to why I see it as morally permissible by looking at factors such as Retributive Justice and Deterrence and providing a counter argument against restorative justice.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines capital punishment as, “an institutionalized practice designed to result in deliberately executing persons in response to actual or supposed misconduct and following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant execution.” (Hoag, n.d.). To summarise the given definition, capital punishment or more commonly referred to today as the ‘death penalty’ is the execution of a person who has been found guilty of a criminal charge, whether it be theft, murder or rape etc.
In essence, capital punishment can be seen as a form of retributive justice. Retributive justice is of the view that justice is best served when the punishment is within proportion of the crime committed. Many people often equate retributive justice with vengeance or revenge however this is not the case. Pojman describes vengeance as an act of inflicting harm out of anger whereas, retribution is of the view, “that a criminal deserves a punishment fitting to the gravity of his crime” (Pojman, 2005).
127 our experts are availableright now
Communities and societies are often enraged when a criminal is not punished in accordance to the crime committed. These days criminals are let off the hook so easily with short term prison sentences, reduced prison sentences partnered with parole and with majority of criminals being granted bail easily. Societies therefore feel the need to take matters into their own hands as they believe that the justice system is not doing its job correctly and subsequently take to the streets where they then hunt down the criminals and commit their own private acts of retribution (Pojman, 2005).
This is not any different in South Africa as there have been many cases coming out of rural areas in South Africa, specifically the Cape Flats and townships where criminals have been taken to task for their actions. A notable example of this would be the death of a notorious gang leader in Cape town, Rashaad Staggie in 1996. A vigilante group from the Cape Flats, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) consisting of over 2000 members, took to the gang leaders house where they shot him in the head and then proceeded to burn him alive (Ellis, 2000). All this chaos ensued after Staggie was granted bail on multiple occasions after being arrested for murder as well as being the kingpin in a suspected underground drug smuggling scandal which operated from his home.
The example mentioned above provides us with substantial reasoning as to why capital punishment should be morally permissible. If the justice system had dealt with the situation accordingly and executed the gang leader, members of the community would not have felt the need to take matters in their own hands and commit criminal activities.
By implementing the capital punishment, it would remind everyone that every single one of our actions, has a consequence. Thus one could say that if the death penalty was to be implemented, it could possibly deter criminal activities from occurring as murderers would then have the thought in the back of their mind that if they are to be caught and not able to escape, they would have their life taken away from them because of the act which they had committed (Pojman, 2005).
On the other side of the spectrum, the opposite of retributive justice is restorative justice. Restorative justice can be defined as “an approach to justice that aims to involve the parties to a dispute and others affected by the harm (victims, offenders, families concerned and community members) in collectively identifying harms, needs and obligations through accepting responsibilities, making restitution, and taking measures to prevent a recurrence of the incident and promoting reconciliation.” (Justice.gov.za, n.d.).
Many people believe and argue that restorative justice is a much better option and way to move forward compared to retributive justice. Restorative Justice theorists believe that it can lead to transformation of people, relationships and communities (Reconciliation, n.d.). They are also of the opinion that by rather sending a criminal to prison where he or she spends a long term in jail, it gives them the opportunity to reflect on their actions and recognise the wrongs and injustices which they have committed, and once they are released, come out to be a “born-again” member of society, realise their mistakes of the past and not want to commit them again.
This argument is true to a certain extent, however if one looks that prisons all over the world and once again specifically in South Africa, once a criminal enters a prison, he is forced to join a gang if he is already not part of one. Prisoners become so accustomed to the prison life that they do not want to leave it. Therefore, once their sentences are up, they are quick to commit another criminal activity to go back to jail where they believe they belong. Also, the chances of the criminal being released and not being tempted to fall into the trap of committing criminal activities again are slim as prisoners once released from prison are released with the bare minimum to get by. This could result once again in them leaning towards crime or theft to get them back on their feet.
If we look at the crime and murder rates for countries where the death penalty is imposed compared to countries where it is not, we are able to see a significance difference in the rates in favour of the death penalty. A practical example would be to look at the rates of Saudi Arabia compared to that of South Africa. According to (Master, 2017) the crime rate of Saudi Arabia to that of South Africa is 23,41% to 86,27% whereas the murder rate is 0.9% to 34%. On average, there are 57 people killed in South Africa everyday (Grobler, 2018) whereas in Saudi Arabia, killings or murders barely occur.
Using the statistics provided above, it is evident that capital punishment can be seen to be a deterrence against crime and murder. A sentence of the death penalty is more likely to deter someone from murdering the next as they would have to face public humiliation if caught, as well as their life being taken from them. In the case where capital punishment is not implemented, a murderer is likely to get a prison sentence of a life sentence which equates to 25 years but can be shortened. Thus, using common sense, a criminal would be less likely to want to spend 25 of his or her years in a prison when he or she could be living a free life (Pojman, 2005).
We need to ask the question as to why we reward criminals and murderers by keeping them alive in prisons? Prisoners are entitled to being fed at least five meals a day, along with the opportunity to further their education and read books, all for them to “turn their life around”. Quite a lot of money is being spent on trying to improve the lives of prisoners when poverty, homelessness and unemployment is a much more prevalent issue. We need to ask why does the governments of countries neglect and pay minimal attention to the basic human rights of those living on the streets, but always try to give prisoners the best of lives under the prison or states rules.
Now there is often a lot of debate with various people bringing different views on whether the death penalty does actually deter people from committing crimes and murder. I proved above by using a country which implemented the death penalty and comparing it a country which does not have the death penalty and the statistics showed in favour of the death penalty. Many may argue that the arguments can be switched around in favour of abolishing the death penalty when using different countries or different states. We can use an argument by Ernest van den Haag (1968) to counter the argument of using other states or countries and use his argument of the ‘Best Bet Argument’.
Van den Haag argues that even though we don’t know for certain whether the death penalty deters or prevents other murders from occurring, we should bet on it that it does. He is quoted to have said, “Not to choose capital punishment for first-degree murder is as much a bet that capital punishment doesn’t deter as choosing the policy is a bet that it does. There is a significant difference in the betting, however, in that to bet against capital punishment is to bet against the innocent and for the murderer, while to bet for it is to bet against the murderer and for the innocent.” (Ernest Van den Haag, 1983).
Capital Punishment needs only to be instilled for serious crimes such as Rape, homicide, serial killings and further crimes where a life is lost. It needs not to be instilled for other crimes such as theft, robbery, fraud and other criminal activities where no other human has or is being physically harmed.
Therefor we are able to conclude that capital punishment for serious crimes where another human being is being physically harmed, can be seen as morally permissible as it proven to have a drastic effect on the deterrence of crimes such as murder, rape and abuse as perpetrators would now have in the back of their mind that if they are to be caught, their life would be taken away from them, just like how they took someone else’s life away.
