Harsher Penalties For Violent Offenders? Essay, Research Paper

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.

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Capital Punishment a report by Tom Guilmette

www.academic.marist.edu/guiltr/cappun.html