Capital Punishment
Essay title: Capital Punishment
Societies all over the globe have been using capital punishment for thousands of
years. It has always been considered a relatively cheap and effective way to punish the
offender and effectively remove him or her from society. Although the methods of
carrying it out have slowly gotten more humane over the centuries, it is still alive and
well in modern culture.
While capital punishment is the most extreme punishment imaginable, barring
torture, it is also the most efficient and logical way to deal with many criminals today
and their inexplicable crimes against humanity. It not only removes the criminal from
society, helping to protect the rest of it’s citizens, but it also saves a large amount of tax
dollars that would otherwise be spent on keeping the subject incarcerated for a long
period of time. Yes, certain modern methods of capital punishment such as lethal
injection may be expensive, considering the price of some of the chemicals and
equipment used, but it is minuscule
in comparison to the cost of paying for someone’s
food, shelter, clothing, and other things for the next 50-60 years or so.
Throughout history, traditional methods of execution have often been somewhat
cruel and/or barbaric. In medieval Europe for example, subjects were often beheaded with a
large battle ax. This proved to be somewhat inefficient and often put it’s victims through
intense agony and suffering in their final living moments. Often times the executioner’s
blade might not have been totally sharpened, requiring several hacks to completely sever the subject’s neck. Other times the executioner might have missed the person’s neck
altogether and sunk the blade into their head. Obviously this would have been extremely unpleasant. A more humane and efficient method of beheading was begotten with the French Revolution invention of the guillotine. Other popular methods of capital punishment used by governments in the past several centuries include hanging, death by
firing squad, and electrocution.
However,