The death penalty deters crime

The argument

Like everyone else, criminals rationalize their decisions. Before committing a crime, they weigh the potential costs and benefits of their action. That premise is what makes punishment intelligible as policy at all: if offenders were wholly indifferent to consequences, no sentence of any length would prevent anything, and criminal law would be reduced to retribution after the fact. If people know that they could be executed for their crimes, they are less likely to commit them. This idea is known as the deterrence theory. Under this framework, harsh punishment prevents criminal activity. For this reason, we should not abolish the death penalty. The observation that it is rarely applied does not defeat the argument, because deterrence operates through what a prospective offender believes might happen rather than through how often it actually happens. Although it is rarely applied, the death penalty's existence deters crime: it is the availability of the sentence, held in reserve for the gravest offences, that enters the calculation being made before the act. If people know that their crimes could lead to their lives being taken, they are more likely to abstain from heinous wrongs. The severity of the penalty matters to that calculation because of what it places at stake. A term of imprisonment, however long, leaves the offender something to return to; an execution does not, which is why proponents hold that it weighs more heavily than any lesser sentence in the mind of someone deciding whether to proceed. In this way, the death penalty saves lives and rids our societies of crime. The death penalty ultimately makes our communities safer, because it forces people to consider the potential consequences of their actions, pitting a natural instinct for self-preservation against their desire to commit a crime. Because the death penalty deters crime, we should not abolish it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Although this argument seems logical, it wrongly assumes that criminal activity is premeditated and rational. In most cases, people commit heinous crimes while overwhelmed by strong physical impulses such as rage or sexual desire. Crime is carnal. It leaves no room for rational thought. As a result, reason is often not a part of a criminal's decision-making process. The criminal will not stop to consider the risk of execution, because reason does not motivate crime. Evil impulses motivate crime. Additionally, if a person stops to consider the risk of execution, he or she can easily dismiss this concern with an assurance of avoiding this punishment. They can avoid the death penalty through evading arrest, hiring strong legal representation, or twisting the crime's narrative. For these reasons, the death penalty does not deter crime.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That offenders weigh costs and benefits is asserted rather than shown. The counter-argument's objection is that many capital-eligible crimes are committed under rage, intoxication or panic, where no such calculation takes place, and the argument answers this by restating the assumption. [Rejecting P2] Deterrence theory itself predicts that certainty of punishment matters more than severity. The argument concedes the death penalty is "rarely applied", which on its own theory should make its deterrent effect small: an offender would have to expect arrest, conviction, a capital sentence, the exhaustion of appeals and an execution years later. [Rejecting P3] "Saves lives and rids our societies of crime" requires a comparison the argument never makes — whether jurisdictions that execute have lower homicide rates than comparable ones that impose life imprisonment. Without it the psychological mechanism could be real and the net effect still nil.