The death penalty gives victims closure

The argument

If someone is a victim of a heinous crime, they must live with an enormous emotional burden. The knowledge of their tormentor's existence in prison only adds to this mental anguish. The argument begins from the point that the harm does not end when the crime does. A sentence that keeps the offender alive keeps them present in the victim's awareness, so every review, transfer or anniversary returns them to something they have no way of leaving behind. We cannot force victims and their families to live with this burden. The death penalty gives victims and co-victims assurance that a morally depraved person can never hurt them, or anyone else, again. What is offered here is finality rather than retribution. Imprisonment is a continuing arrangement that can be altered by escape, release or the reduction of a sentence, and while it continues the possibility of harm is never formally closed; execution removes that possibility as a matter of fact rather than of administration. If we sentence deserving criminals to the death penalty, victims and their families can find closure in knowing that justice has been done. Closure in this sense requires a conclusion, and an ongoing sentence does not supply one, because a case that remains open in any respect remains open to the people it was about. Abolishing the death penalty would deprive victims of closure, leading to increased mental and emotional health issues. It would also decrease victims' overall satisfaction with the criminal justice system, which should consider their needs a top priority. That last claim is the argument's answer to the question of whom the system exists for. If the interests of victims are a primary consideration rather than an incidental one, then the effect of a sentence upon them is a proper ground for choosing it. For this reason, we should not abolish the death penalty.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Although this line of reasoning rightly values victims' feelings, the death penalty does not necessarily alleviate their pain. On the contrary, seeking the death penalty is a long and stressful process. It often worsens the pain of victims and their families, reigniting their grief and interrupting their healing process. According to a University of Minnesota study, only 2.5% of co-victims reported finding increased closure because of the death penalty. The study also found that co-victims achieve greater physical and mental health after seeking life in prison sentences, not the death penalty. The death penalty also creates more victims- the family and friends of executed prisoners. Like the original victim's family, they must mourn the unnatural death of a loved one. In an attempt to soothe one family's pain, the death penalty creates an entirely new group of people who must resolve feelings of pain and grief. The death penalty is an ineffective solution for victims and their families. It does not alleviate grief, it simply gives grief to other people.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The burden is real, but the premise assumes what the evidence disputes — that the offender's continued existence is what sustains it. Research on co-victims finds that the drawn-out capital process, with automatic appeals, retrials and decades of uncertainty, is itself a principal source of prolonged distress, and a sentence of life without parole removes the offender from the picture without that process. [Rejecting P2] Both halves fail. Life without parole equally ensures that an offender cannot harm anyone again, so incapacitation does not distinguish the punishments. And closure is precisely the empirical claim the research addresses: in the study cited, only 2.5 per cent of co-victims reported greater closure from the death penalty, with better physical and mental health outcomes among those whose cases ended in life sentences. [Rejecting P3] Even granting the premise, victim satisfaction cannot be the criterion the conclusion makes of it. Sentencing is a public act rather than a service delivered to the bereaved, and victims' families disagree among themselves — many actively oppose capital sentences in their own cases. The premise also counts only one set of families: an execution creates another, mourning a death the state has chosen.