This list is ordered from the least important/prevalent/effective arguments in favour of the death penalty, to the most significant ones that may leave anti-capital punishment advocates with doubt.
Each refutal consists in my personal response with references to criminological facts or evidence, as well as economical/financial factors and general human rights/human dignity.
Feel free to add arguments that I might have forgotten
By the way, each hyphen represents a different counter-argument
9 - The death penalty prevents people (victims and families) from doing their own justice by their hands Counter-arguments:
- That's actually revenge
- People don't have the right to exercise justice, that's the state's function and no one else's, unless you are acting in self-defence
- A violent form of punishment with immoral traits will perpetuate immoral ideas for every citizen.
8 - The death penalty is morally/ethically correct Counter-arguments:
- Justice is not about morality, but about what's right and what's not
- If we define morality as deliberately harming others, the death penalty is actually immoral since it can be avoided but it's not
7 - The death penalty reduces overcrowding of penitentiary institutions/facilities. Counter-arguments:
- Not all countries have their prisons overcrowded
- Making a decision so important as using or not capital punishment shouldn't depend on volatile, non absolute demographic/economic issues - Would you be against the death penalty if prisons weren't overcrowded? If so, then your position has no ideals, just convenience - Such a decision should depend on the validity of capital punishment (or not)
- There are other methods to reduce prisons overcrowding, such as building extra facilities to hold more convicts
- Even if the previous counter-arguments weren't enough, only a minority of sentenced criminals would fill the requirements to be executed, and considering the majority of individuals who commit crimes engage mostly on small or medium criminality but not as much on high profiling extremely criminality (like terrorism, genocide, premeditated murder and so on) executing these people would not be enough to strongly reduce the overcrowding of prisons, considering that most of the convict population would not fill the requirements to be sentenced to death
6 - The death penalty costs less funds than keeping dangerous useless criminals in prison Counter-arguments:
- Sentencing someone to death costs a significant amount of money unless we're talking about China or North Korea - And for good reasons, when someone is being trialled with their lives at stake it is completely rational to allow a proper, more extensive and organized defence process to prevent the execution of an innocent person
- Deciding whether or not we should use capital punishment shouldn't depend on how much money it costs, but on how fair or not it is
- Criminals in jail could work for the benefit of the community and to pay compensations to victims and society - Not slavery, but responsible ethical work - This would also increase the chances of rehabilitation
5 - The death penalty is justice because it's proportional - It's an eye for an eye Counter arguments:
- If your conception of justice is an eye for an eye, and by that it means people who kill deserve to be killed - Do you also want to imply that people who rape should be raped, those who rob should be robbed, and that sentences should simply mimic the crime itself? Do you realize how idiotic that is?
- An eye for an eye is not the correct definition of justice nor is it productive or ethically unquestionable - It is based on the premise of revenge and inflicting harm to others because they inflicted it to us, and not on improving the current state of affairs.
4 - Criminals cannot be rehabilitated, they are animals after what they have done Counter-arguments
- There's no conclusive evidence that any individual cannot be rehabilitated after committing a crime - It depends on how much effort society wants to put on it while steering away of our primitive revenge needs - Excluding logically people with mental illnesses and personality/psychological/psychic disorders like psychopathy, since those conditions can and are (sometimes) incurable, but even so the majority of criminals are not psychopaths
3 - We need to compensate the victim's families for the suffering Counter-arguments:
- Any criminal sentence is not about the families getting revenge, the family has zero saying on the punishment - That's why judges ought to be impartial - It's not about the victim, it's about doing the best for society and the criminal is punished not because of the specific victim (John or Jane) but because of the damage he/she caused by breaking criminal laws.
- Appeal to emotions fallacies are not valid, deciding what's justice on the mind of the victim is not productive and results on revengeful ideals
- Impartiality is important for a good justice system - Justice cannot be on the side of the victim, justice is impartial, it doesn't take sides and decides what's best for everyone according to each individual case - Not to mention presumption of innocence
- A long trial to execute someone can cause pain and agony to the victim's family because of how much they have to wait after all the appeals
2 - The death penalty deters crime Counter arguments:
- No evidence for that (that heavier criminal punishment, even death, deters or prevents crime), it's not about how harsh punishment his (or how though) - It's about certainty of punishment - If someone knows he/she won't get caught, chances are he/she is more likely to commit a crime because impunity is prevalent - However certainty of punishment works far better than simply raising how many years individuals who serve time (those who do) will do. In fact, we can see that in states with the death penalty crime rates are actually higher
- Deterring crime is not the only function of sentences, no sentence can violate basic human rights and there are more effective and less damaging ways to prevent criminality like raising educational and equal social opportunities
1 - The death penalty prevents recidivism by 100%
Counter-arguments:
- Preventing recidivism can be done, as shown by Norway, trough a sustainable penitentiary system that bets on rehabilitation and human rights without recurring to inhumane forms of punishment like capital punishment or using methods like solitary confinement that gives origin to mental trauma and increases recidivism
- Preventing recidivism doesn't excuse violating basic human rights just like finding out the truth doesn't justify torture - Not to mention you can sentence an innocent, and that leads the perpetrator out there to commit the crime again.
P.S. - I'm not considering any arguments that use god or religion as it's foundational principles and I'm not using any anti-death penalty arguments, just refuting the pro-capital punishment most used ones.[/align]
Each refutal consists in my personal response with references to criminological facts or evidence, as well as economical/financial factors and general human rights/human dignity.
Feel free to add arguments that I might have forgotten
By the way, each hyphen represents a different counter-argument
9 - The death penalty prevents people (victims and families) from doing their own justice by their hands Counter-arguments:
- That's actually revenge
- People don't have the right to exercise justice, that's the state's function and no one else's, unless you are acting in self-defence
- A violent form of punishment with immoral traits will perpetuate immoral ideas for every citizen.
8 - The death penalty is morally/ethically correct Counter-arguments:
- Justice is not about morality, but about what's right and what's not
- If we define morality as deliberately harming others, the death penalty is actually immoral since it can be avoided but it's not
7 - The death penalty reduces overcrowding of penitentiary institutions/facilities. Counter-arguments:
- Not all countries have their prisons overcrowded
- Making a decision so important as using or not capital punishment shouldn't depend on volatile, non absolute demographic/economic issues - Would you be against the death penalty if prisons weren't overcrowded? If so, then your position has no ideals, just convenience - Such a decision should depend on the validity of capital punishment (or not)
- There are other methods to reduce prisons overcrowding, such as building extra facilities to hold more convicts
- Even if the previous counter-arguments weren't enough, only a minority of sentenced criminals would fill the requirements to be executed, and considering the majority of individuals who commit crimes engage mostly on small or medium criminality but not as much on high profiling extremely criminality (like terrorism, genocide, premeditated murder and so on) executing these people would not be enough to strongly reduce the overcrowding of prisons, considering that most of the convict population would not fill the requirements to be sentenced to death
6 - The death penalty costs less funds than keeping dangerous useless criminals in prison Counter-arguments:
- Sentencing someone to death costs a significant amount of money unless we're talking about China or North Korea - And for good reasons, when someone is being trialled with their lives at stake it is completely rational to allow a proper, more extensive and organized defence process to prevent the execution of an innocent person
- Deciding whether or not we should use capital punishment shouldn't depend on how much money it costs, but on how fair or not it is
- Criminals in jail could work for the benefit of the community and to pay compensations to victims and society - Not slavery, but responsible ethical work - This would also increase the chances of rehabilitation
5 - The death penalty is justice because it's proportional - It's an eye for an eye Counter arguments:
- If your conception of justice is an eye for an eye, and by that it means people who kill deserve to be killed - Do you also want to imply that people who rape should be raped, those who rob should be robbed, and that sentences should simply mimic the crime itself? Do you realize how idiotic that is?
- An eye for an eye is not the correct definition of justice nor is it productive or ethically unquestionable - It is based on the premise of revenge and inflicting harm to others because they inflicted it to us, and not on improving the current state of affairs.
4 - Criminals cannot be rehabilitated, they are animals after what they have done Counter-arguments
- There's no conclusive evidence that any individual cannot be rehabilitated after committing a crime - It depends on how much effort society wants to put on it while steering away of our primitive revenge needs - Excluding logically people with mental illnesses and personality/psychological/psychic disorders like psychopathy, since those conditions can and are (sometimes) incurable, but even so the majority of criminals are not psychopaths
3 - We need to compensate the victim's families for the suffering Counter-arguments:
- Any criminal sentence is not about the families getting revenge, the family has zero saying on the punishment - That's why judges ought to be impartial - It's not about the victim, it's about doing the best for society and the criminal is punished not because of the specific victim (John or Jane) but because of the damage he/she caused by breaking criminal laws.
- Appeal to emotions fallacies are not valid, deciding what's justice on the mind of the victim is not productive and results on revengeful ideals
- Impartiality is important for a good justice system - Justice cannot be on the side of the victim, justice is impartial, it doesn't take sides and decides what's best for everyone according to each individual case - Not to mention presumption of innocence
- A long trial to execute someone can cause pain and agony to the victim's family because of how much they have to wait after all the appeals
2 - The death penalty deters crime Counter arguments:
- No evidence for that (that heavier criminal punishment, even death, deters or prevents crime), it's not about how harsh punishment his (or how though) - It's about certainty of punishment - If someone knows he/she won't get caught, chances are he/she is more likely to commit a crime because impunity is prevalent - However certainty of punishment works far better than simply raising how many years individuals who serve time (those who do) will do. In fact, we can see that in states with the death penalty crime rates are actually higher
- Deterring crime is not the only function of sentences, no sentence can violate basic human rights and there are more effective and less damaging ways to prevent criminality like raising educational and equal social opportunities
1 - The death penalty prevents recidivism by 100%
Counter-arguments:
- Preventing recidivism can be done, as shown by Norway, trough a sustainable penitentiary system that bets on rehabilitation and human rights without recurring to inhumane forms of punishment like capital punishment or using methods like solitary confinement that gives origin to mental trauma and increases recidivism
- Preventing recidivism doesn't excuse violating basic human rights just like finding out the truth doesn't justify torture - Not to mention you can sentence an innocent, and that leads the perpetrator out there to commit the crime again.
P.S. - I'm not considering any arguments that use god or religion as it's foundational principles and I'm not using any anti-death penalty arguments, just refuting the pro-capital punishment most used ones.[/align]
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you
