A regression of society

Disclaimer: AI tools were used to assist in brainstorming and drafting. This blog post is ultimately a reflection of my personal experiences and thoughts.

You know how it is—when you're a child, you get scraped knee, and it aches so intensely. But that pain makes you more cautious the next time. Fast forward to adulthood, and pain still manages to get the better of us. It makes us learn how not to do something, how to behave, and even how to make choices. But here's where things get a little tricky: What do we do when, as a society, we choose that the best way to respond to pain inflicted by others is to inflict it back on them? It's an unsettling question, but it's one we can't afford to avoid. How do we treat people who inflict extreme suffering? Is it just or effective to inflict harm on them in return, or even to kill them? With increasingly more people calling for stronger punishments, including the death penalty, this is a question more pressing than ever.

Let's Talk About History for a Moment

Before we get to the arguments over punishment, let's take a step back and look where our justice systems have been. For centuries, societies have employed punishment as a method of seeking revenge and intimidating individuals into behaving. And let me tell you, some of the solutions they came to were downright appalling. Consider burning at the stake, mutilation, and other gruesome executions intended to inflict as much pain as possible. These punishments weren't about justice; they were public spectacles intended to frighten individuals into behaving.

But here's the thing: these punishments didn't actually reduce crime. And they had the effect of dehumanizing everyone involved—both the offending individual being punished and the punishing society. Women, in fact, were treated brutally and unfairly. The witch hunts are a case in point. Thousands of women were accused, tortured, and killed, often by burning, all in the name of "justice". It's a dark stain on history, and one we can't afford to forget.

If such extreme punishments existed in the past, why have societies moved away from them? The answer lies in a growing respect for human rights, a growing understanding of why people commit crime, and the knowledge that these punishments simply didn't work. Over time, the world started to move towards more humane and effective ways of dealing with crime.

Does the Death Penalty Really Work?

Alright, let's get realistic for a moment. One of the strongest arguments for the death penalty is that it deters crime—that the threat of execution or death deters people from committing serious crime. But does the evidence actually back this up? Not really. Studies in the United States have concluded that states that have the death penalty have no lower crime rate than states that don't have it. In fact, research suggests that states that don't have capital punishment have lower murder rates.

A huge National Research Council report in 2012 reviewed decades of data and found no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Groups such as the Death Penalty Information Center have come to the same conclusion. And the world is going in the opposite direction. As of 2023, more than two-thirds of nations have abolished death penalty or no longer apply it. But it is interesting to note that more than half the people on the planet live in countries where it is still practiced.

The facts are there: the death penalty doesn't deter crime. Rather than keeping our focus on punishment, we need to do something about the causes of crime—such as poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to education and mental health care. The investment in rehabilitative programs to reform offenders so they can live as productive citizens is a more productive path to take.

Here's the Bottom Line

Working on fear and punishment isn't the solution, no matter how much we would wish it to be. In fact, it's in the opposite direction. We need to have faith that people can be change—not everyone, perhaps, but it's the attempt that should be made. If we can think of people as human beings even when they've committed atrocious crimes, we might be able to figure out how they got where they are and, from this, develop stronger measures to prevent crimes from happening again in the future to everyone's advantage.

We cannot justify killing humans because their actions appear monstrous. They are human, capable of monstrous acts, but also capable of change. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

If you want to read more about the death penalty, its impacts, and alternatives, I recommend you check out the Death Penalty Information Center (deathpenaltyinfo.org) and Amnesty International (amnesty.org). What do you think about this complex topic? Let us know in the comments.