One of the things people who believe in the rule of law has allowed the criminal coddling bleeding-heart talking heads to get away with is the continued lie that “the death penalty is not the answer”.
The people who acquiesce to criminal conduct have done a terrific job of misinforming the public on why we should do nothing about the scourge of crime because crime is definitely a product of poverty, inequality and want. This bunch of cockamamie has been allowed to stand because those of us who have fought in the trenches against murderers rapists and thieves know quite well that there is precious little truth to those assertions.
So before we proceed further lets ask the question ” The death penalty is not the answer to what ?
Jamaicans always wanting to show the world just how advanced they are has consistently been on the forefront of these conversations regarding the death penalty . Unfortunately Jamaica has one of the highest per-capita murder rates in the entire world. In the year 2005 Jamaica peaked as the country with the highest murder rate on planet earth. Since then the homicide numbers has subsided some but have remained terrifyingly high when compared to the rest of the world, including countries actively engaged in civil wars./
So the debate rages and the prognosticators continue to make the false argument that “the death penalty is not the answer” .
Hence my question to that misleading presumption, “not the answer to what”?
Recently one Jamaica prognosticator wrote an exhaustive Article in the Jamaica Daily Gleaner titled “The death penalty is not the answer!
In the Article he cited research data from the United States a nation which actively and vigorously track and punish criminals to the full extent of the law.
A massive nation of 308 million people with the death penalty still being enforced today in the majority of the fifty (50) states.
He argued that A study performed in the United States of America in 2008 found that 88 per cent of the nation’s leading criminologists did not believe that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. Subsequently, a report released in 2012 by the National Research Council of the National Academies, based on a review of more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are fundamentally flawed.
The report read: “The committee concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Therefore, the committee recommends that these studies not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide.”
Indeed, in that country, states that have death-penalty laws do not have lower crime or murder rates than states without such laws, and states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates.
Apart from the absence of convincing evidence demonstrating deterrence, capital punishment presents several other issues. The death penalty violates the right to life. When a person takes the life of another, one may claim that they have forfeited their right to live, a view held by many.
Unfortunately, the death penalty is also discriminatory, and is often used against the most vulnerable in society, including the poor, the illiterate and people with mental disabilities.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20160516/michael-abrahams-death-penalty-not-answer
In the United States anyone may commission a report to say anything he/she wants. I may commission a report which will bolster my claim that the sky is green instead of blue. One simply needs motivation and money.
So when a report comes out making a certain claim the very first question which must be asked is, who commissioned that report?
Most reports are tailored to support the point of view of those who commissioned said report.
To someone living outside the United States it may appear that such research data are irrefutable gospel, to others they are junk science .
The data to which the writer refers and to which the liberal blue states within the United States subscribe is indeed a terrific metric that the death penalty does work.
Those blue states in which the death penalty is not practiced are the most violent states with the highest murder rates and indeed the states in which the most violent crimes are committed.
It’s important to note that even in the states where the death penalty is not practiced there are tough non-lethal laws such as the Rico statutes, as well as others like the Rockefeller three strikes laws in New York State which effectively removes criminals from the streets for good where they may not harm innocent people anymore.
It’s is naïveté’and or malicious to use statistic gleaned from a country like the United States to make an argument for Jamaica in which law enforcement is largely non-existent and where the laws actually are geared toward the protection of criminals at the expense of the innocent.
Many of the homicides in Jamaica are being committed by offenders who have multiple killings under their belt. In fact killing has become so fashionable it is a part of the pop culture.Young men are revered for “making duppy” a colloquial term for someone who has taken human life.
Many have killed over a dozen people and have paid no price for their actions.
If these men are caught, tried and executed how can anyone make the argument that their demise has no impact on crime when they have no possibility of returning to kill again?
The arguments about the way the death penalty as it is being applied in the United States are arguments which goes to fairness, the equitable and just application of the law and not the death penalty itself.
Those conversations are not arguments against the death penalty, they ought to be about dealing with racism and inequality wherever they may exist,.
How does one know what the murder figures would be in Texas a state in which the death penalty is carried out with utter dispatch? Could be much higher , or not!
Conversely how does one know what the murder figures would be in New York a liberal state in which the death penalty is not used?Could be lower or not!
The answer is that no one knows.
So when we argue that the death penalty does not work , lets establish that it does work against those who would kill over and over as is the case in Jamaica where there are so many mass murderers walking the streets with no fear of ever being held accountable.
It’s about time someone push back against that liberal lie .
The death penalty is not a panacea to stomping out crime, nothing is .The reality is that it’s one more tool in the tool-box which should never be discarded.
As a famous General once said “when you go to war take all your weapons , use them and go home” (Colin Powell, former chairman of the joint chiefs and former secretary of state of the United States of America).
I am tired of the grandstanding and the posturing on crime by armchair generals and key-board prognosticators whom have never faced the business end of a gun.