Essay/Term paper: Crime and punishment

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Politics

Crime and Punishment


Kenneth Pang
1/4/96

Ever since the beginning of modern society, crime and punishment have
been linked together. Depend on the seriousness of the crime, those who break
the laws are punished accordingly. As the amount of homicide increased in the
passed several years, people are demanding tougher punishments for more murder.
Among them, the most supported one was the reapplying of execution as a mean of
punishment. This notion could help decrease the number of killing, however it
also raised many concerns. In order for execution to be reinstated as a
punishment for murder, questions such as the morality of executing criminals and
the possibility of killing a innocence person must be answered.

One concern of executing murderers is the morality of the act. First of
all, killing of any kind is wrong. As outlined by laws and guaranteed by the
Canada Charter of Human Right, every human is entitle to live. And under no
circumstances do anyone else have the right to someone else live away.
Extinguishing the life of the murderer is equivalent to murderers killing their
victim. If it is illegal for murderers kill, how is it possible for government
to be justify to end the lives of the murderers.

Another concern of executing murderers is the possibility of killing an
innocence person. With our improving technology, what we now believe is beyond
reasonable doubt might a verdict filled with errors in the future. One very good
example of this is the recent acquitting of a man jailed for raped and the
murder of a girl. If he was executed at the time, he would of never had the
chance to prove his innocence with the D.N.A. tests. He as an innocence man
would have been killed.

Legalizing execution for the punishing of murderers is a very important
decision for Canadians to make. The result of the decision will decide of
government have the right to kill its citizens. In making his decision, everyone
have to consider the consequences of sending a innocence man to death. Death is
the permanent depriving of any human activity. If an innocence man is sentence
to death, there is no way he could every get his life back. Unless there is a
way to prove a criminal is one hundred percent guilty, execution should not be
reinstated.