Executing The Death Penalty Essays - Penology, Criminology

Executing the Death Penalty The implementation of capital punishment in the United States today has become a seldom-used means to deter crime. The death penalty was established in order to punish those who are guilty and to discourage those who contemplate committing heinous crimes from doing so. Society has backed down from its very supportive stance on the death penalty since being barraged with propaganda that says capital punishment is cruel and unusual. Most of the crimes committed by those who face execution can be listed as either cruel or unusual, though. Through analyzing the effectiveness of deterrence, the ineffectiveness of life sentences, and the morality of capital punishment, the significance of the death penalty can be shown. Deterrence refers to the suggestion that executing murderers will decrease the rate of homicides by causing potential murderers not to commit murder for fear of being executed themselves. The fear of punishment is enough to dissuade many people from taking extreme actions. Since 1990, Harris County, a single county in Texas has had more executions than any other county in any state in the United States, according to David Bragdon, a Government/Pre-law major from North Carolina. During the period between 1990 and 1995, Harris County has had a forty-eight percent drop in crime, the greatest decrease in the United States. In Harris County, the highest homicide rate was in 1981, one year before the death penalty was reinstated in Texas. This directly indicates that the implementation of the death penalty correlates with a drop in the homicide rate(Guernsey,9). Deterrence is effective when properly put into practice. Many people have argued that the cost of executing a prisoner is higher than keeping him incarcerated for life. The annual cost of incarceration is $40,000 to $50,000 a year for prisoners who are serving life terms without parole(Wekesser,2). Executing a prisoner is much more cost effective in the end. The death penalty costs reside mainly in appeals costs. Life without parole prisoners get the same appeals and should be considered to bear the same costs. If we only allowed appeals that are relevant in proving an individual's innocence and eliminated the many more that are used merely as delaying tactics, it would save a large amount of taxpayer money(O'Brien,160). Life without parole, based on economic reasons, is not a definitive argument against the implementation of the death penalty. Morality has always been a major issue when discussing the capital punishment. It is not morally sound to take any other human being's life unless it is justified. Killing someone is not right, but the death penalty is necessary to protect a person's right to live. As Americans, we should not have to live in fear of these felons. Society must be protected from the criminals who pose a threat to the members of that society. Sometimes the only was to benefit both society and even the individual is by administering the death penalty. According to author Carol Wekesser in The Death Penalty (Opposing Viewpoints), executing someone should not be viewed as murder; it is punishment inflicted by society on a deserving criminal. Moral views should not affect the justice system so greatly in such cases. First, deterrence, if correctly utilized, is effective in the prevention of crimes as established previously. Furthermore, there is clear evidence to support the fact that the cost of imprisonin g an inmate for life greatly outweighs that of executing him or her. Moral issues also have to be put aside when determining whether or not an individual deserves a penalty such as death. Support for capital punishment has steadily decreased because people are not researching the facts that they are being given, but merely accepting the blind truths about how ineffective the death penalty has become. These facts prove that capital punishment should be implemented more in our society to help curb crime rates and make our America safer. Bibliography Works Cited Guernsey, JoAnn Brenn. Should We Have Capital Punishment?. Minnesota: Lerner Publications Company, 1993. O'Brien, David M. Constitutional Law and Politics, Second Edition. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 1994. pp 154-161. Toufexis, Anastasia. Seeking the Roots of Violence. Time. April 19, 1993. Wekesser, Carol. The Death Penalty (Opposing Viewpoints). California: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1991.

The easiest way to settle office grammar disputes

The easiest way to settle office grammar disputes The easiest way to settle office grammar disputes Like it or not, we all end up getting thrown into arguments about whether something weve written is correct. This could be a colleague picking you up on your apostrophes. Or it might be a subtle point of style that your manager crosses out with angry red pen. It may just be a snide Facebook comment from someone who sees correcting the grammar of strangers as the highest good in earthly existence. Seemingly minor disputes like this can blow up into major arguments and tetchy, defensive disputes. And while some people can devote over forty thousand words to debating capitalisation after a colon, for most of us this isnt the best use of our time. So how do you settle an argument over whats right and wrong as quickly as possible? Seeking the Authority The easiest thing would be to check against the correct usage in the book that says what counts as correct English. But heres the thing: there is no such book. Nor is there any individual person. There is nobody, at all, on the planet, whom you can ask for the definitive answer on whether or not a particular piece of usage is absolutely correct. But surely this is too much? Dont some things stay the same? Not really. In language, very little is safe from change. Practically every area of English has changed in some way: from fundamental aspects of grammar right down to the meaning of words. For example, the word ‘December’ originally meant ‘the tenth month of the year’. So you might want to think twice about inviting pedants to Christmas dinner – unless you want someone turning up with mince pies in October. Where does this leave us? Were all passengers on a ship without a captain. But dont worry, its fine: we dont need one. We dont need a gold standard, just a set of conventions that most people agree on – especially in professional contexts. To draw an analogy: theres no single authority to tell you that showing up to a job interview at a consulting firm in board shorts and a tank top is the wrong thing to do. And maybe in fifty years surfer chic will be de rigeur for any aspiring professional. But for the moment were happy to call this wrong. This is all very interesting, but how does it help you when you need to check which conventions to obey? And which ones to ignore? Heres a rundown of three ports of call when youre in the midst of an office argument: Single words We recommend picking a good dictionary to use across your organisation. For example, at Emphasis we use Collins English Dictionary. This allows us to spell and hyphenate words consistently. Rather than spending time debating whether or not to write coordinate or co-ordinate, we just use their first preferred variant. Grammar and punctuation rules So many of the arguments we see professionals have are based on half-remembered superstitions from school. But its best to skip this act of strained remembrance and go directly to the best available information. Some of the best ports of call here are books written by linguists whove looked into these matters in detail, and offer facts instead of conjecture. For example, Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, which contains extremely in-depth analysis of dozens of grammar rules (or supposed rules). If someone is bringing out grammatical artillery during your discussion, Pinker is an excellent guide through the confusion. A lot of other arguments come from an over-reliance on rules of thumb about good writing (such as the golden rule that you should never use the passive voice). When you come across this kind of debate, we recommend Joseph Williams Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace and his nuanced, up-to-date analysis of what precisely makes good writing. Huge swathes of the finicky arguments that you can get into over split infinitives or starting a sentence with an And or a But can be solved by pointing people to these kinds of sources. But what if your argumentative friend continues to disagree with professors of linguistics on the matter? You may have just spotted either a lost cause, or an argument that is threatening to take up too much of your time. Points of style Some questions will never be ultimately decided. For example, the capitalisation of job titles varies considerably across organisations and contexts. So theres flexibility on this point when choosing a style for yourself or your organisation. Making decisions about these sorts of questions every time you encounter them is a big waste of time and a recipe for inconsistency across your organisation. One of the best ways round this is to get into the habit of checking style guides. Good examples are the style guides of The Economist and the Guardian. Theyve already done the work of looking into questions about grammar and usage, and tend to offer much more succinct recommendations than youll find if you trawl through the internet looking for answers. And our own style guide, The Write Stuff, is designed specifically to help you with the questions you face most in your day-to-day writing. These include questions like how to capitalise job titles or how to write common abbreviations like CEO. Youll find all the answers in one place – and you can download your free copy here. (Well be talking more about the ways style guides can help you at work next week.) Beware rabbit holes Above all, make sure that the time you spend looking into these questions is time well spent. The main problem with looking things up is it can work too well. You can easily end up spending hours reading about the tiniest points of usage and style. For example, here are over 20 blog posts, written by reasonable, informed users of English, on the differences between that and which. This is just too much information when youre trying to solve an argument quickly. Instead, we recommend taking one of the three routes above for solving each question, ending your disputes, and getting on with your life. Don’t forget: if you’d like a handy reference for resolving some of those office-based style matters, you can download a free PDF of our guide The Write Stuff here. And if you’d like our help with developing a style guide for your company, get in touch. Image credit: Junial Enterprises / Shutterstock