Harsher Penalties For Violent Offenders?
Should violent offenders be forced to face heavier penalties for their
crimes?
I think so. And that there should also be some reforms made to
our penal system.
The death penalty serves its purpose, it kills,
instills fear, and generally wastes
tax-payers time and money. I think we
need stiffer penalties as an alternative to the
death penalty because some of
the penalties we have now are becoming ineffective,
because a lot of them are
very expensive, and because many violent offenders are
repeat
offenders.
When a violent crime is committed, after the court proceedings
are over, and
if the accused is found guilty, the jury may rule that the
criminal should be
incarcerated for life. In which case the criminal is
brought to a penitentiary, given a
home, food ,clothing and possibly a job. I
realize that there are people out there who
believe that the system we are
currently using is acceptable. In which case, they
may argue that the
criminals of today are just misguided and misunderstood. They
are the ones
who want less crime, and a hardly demeaning lifestyle for criminals.
What
is the point of having a life sentence? We have people who have killed
in
cold blood, sitting in jail to rot. This makes me think. Why should a criminal
live
better than I am? We give the criminals of today too much credit and not
enough
hard time. I would give them enough food to live on, a cot, toilet,
and sink. if more
people could read the college essay I read before writing
this they would
understand. The writer says in his paper that even though the
death penalty is used
in a state, there is not usually a change in the crime
rate. This means that no one is
afraid of it.
If we would start
punishing criminals, with punishments other than death or a
life sentence or
two, and stop hosting a criminal open house, we would stop
spending so much
money on rehabilitation. In a selection from my source, the author
writes:
"Many moral concerns are brought up by the death penalty used as
punishment.
The Bible (Genesis 9:6) says, ‘Whosoever sheds man's blood, by man
may his
blood be shed.’ This classic argument in favor of the death penalty
has
usually been interpreted as a proper and moral reason for putting a
murderer to
death. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime’ is its secondary
counterpart. Both quotes
imply that the murderer deserves to die and it was
his own fault for putting himself
on death row... In Florida, it costs $3.2
million on each death row inmate, compared
to about $535,000 for an average
of 40 years for each prisoner sentenced to life.
This is a huge amount of
taxpayers’ money, but the public looks at it as an
investment in safety since
these murderers will never kill again."
Most violent offenders are in
fact, repeat offenders. The only reason is
because we as Americans in our
justice system don’t place enough emphasis on the
fact that once a crime is
committed and a convicted felon is placed in prison, they
can get out early
for good behavior, or on a work release program; to commit their
crimes
again. Is it fair that a criminal is sentenced to 20 years, serves three or
four
out of that 20 and is released? Repeat offenders should not be released
until there is
a guarantee that they will not commit a crime
again.
Hopefully, by your reading this you have begun to think about why
harsher
penalties should be imposed on violent criminals. Hopefully, it has
also answered
any questions you might have had about repeat offenders, the
ineffectiveness of our
punishments on them, and the money tax-payers pay into
our nations criminal
offenders.
Works Cited Page
Capital
Punishment a report by Tom
Guilmette
www.academic.marist.edu/guiltr/cappun.html