Essay About Voices Of People And Death Penalty

Death Penalty for JuvenilesDeath Penalty for JuvenilesOn January 5, 1993, behind a wall where he may have heard the voices of people cheering outside, Westley Allan Dodd was hanged by the state of Washington (Dority). But the people parading outside were not sadists. They were merely displaying their agreement with the verdict and the sentence. They opened champagne bottles and set off fire crackers not because they were simple minded but because they wanted it to be over (Dority).Families waited for justice and it was within arm’s reach. The people demonstrating along with numerous experts said that Dodd was a “sadistic psychopathic pedophile incapable of empathy, that his greatest fear was being ‘a nobody,’ and that he had successfully manipulated us into making him ‘a somebody’ via the sensational media coverage of his hanging” The families and the people of Washington did get justice that night. But Dodd was not a juvenile. Yet, had he been executed years earlier, perhaps others would not have had to suffer. Lives would have been saved. In the end, Dodd’s life was lost anyway. Perhaps executing murderers at younger ages would serve not only as a deterrent and a form of retribution but also effective in creating a safer society.

There is extreme opposition to the use of the death penalty for minors, even among capital punishment supporters. The United States is in the minority, and one of only seven countries in the world, that executes minors (Eckford). This may surprise some as the United States’ system of justice has always been looked up to compared with the barbaric practices we see in other countries. It is true that our prisoners get cable television and other perks that go along with American life. Yet, as juvenile crime rises, something has to be done. Allowing the death penalty for juvenile murderers is one solution. With the high rate of recidivism this is actually quite practical.

A 1988 telephone survey conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency revealed that more than two thirds of the respondents supported a treatment and rehabilitation-oriented juvenile court; also, more than half the total sample indicated that they did not favor giving juveniles the same sentences as adults (Schwartz). A 1986 study that was conducted in Ohio was designed to test the level of public support for the juvenile death penalty. This poll found strong opposition to “passing a law to allow the death penalty for juveniles over 14 years of age convicted of murder”; in Cincinnati, 69% of the respondents expressed opposition to such a law and 65% of the respondents in Columbus felt the same way. Authors say that their findings are consistent with other death penalty studies. A 1965 Gallup Poll also showed similar results (Schwartz). A 1990 Michigan study showed gender differences with males being more prone to favor the death penalty for juvenile

– and females somewhat more likely to support the death penalty for those aged 18-25 (Schwartz). Several previous studies have also shown that young and old people do very different things if they are treated differently than they are treated in juvenile justice. In 1989, an experiment was run in Maryland conducted by the Baltimore County School Board in which 14 adult men and women were placed in jail for five days and told about six days of sentences. The children were placed in adult prisons for a week or two before a parole hearing. These men and women were placed with a maximum sentence of 15 years’ probation, which had three years’ post-release supervision. Their sentences were then extended up to 60 days (in which they could still receive at least 10 years’ of probation if a parole or probation officer recommended a longer term of more than two decades) before being sent back to state, county, or juvenile facilities. In 1986, the Baltimore County school system re-opened the facility after receiving a federal court decision that the state refused to re-open the facility until the final determination of the new prison conditions. In 1990, the Baltimore County School Board issued new guidelines to encourage cooperation between schools. The new guidelines established a number of new restrictions on how inmates should be treated. In addition, corrections personnel would be prohibited from providing medication, supervision, or counseling to juveniles or anyone they might have contact with within the first day in jail. The new guidelines also instructed that if a prisoner or staff member becomes agitated or has serious psychotic symptoms during a long-term probation (i.e., if they have a major mental illness and/or a history of violence), all personnel in the prison could be placed in segregation and required to wear body heaters. However, these new guidelines limited access to the facility (i.e., all facilities must have a physical health monitor, or be assigned a physician who may prescribe medication for those who are mentally ill). The prison personnel also were not required to adhere to the new guidelines and were instructed to provide supervision to all of the prisoners in segregation. At the time of the study, more than 90% of prisoners in segregation had experienced psychotic symptoms during incarceration. In addition, the Baltimore County prison system was also designed to deter the use of solitary confinement and the possibility of a psychiatric hospital in the same facility for the same number of prisoners (Schwartz). In 1994, a study examining the role of juvenile mortality in the death penalty was completed in which 16,879 juvenile offenders were found to be dying within the first six months of life, after a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment. The researchers found that the death penalty-related mortality effect had a disproportionately large effect on the elderly (48.5%) and incarcerated youth (29.4%), but those with nonstatistics (25%) were more likely than those without a statistically significant nonstatistics effect to make the death penalty’s mortality rate 1.3 times greater than the corresponding death penalty’s; however, these groups were almost all older than the general population and were not at higher risk of dying early if they did not appear to be directly responsible for their deaths (Schwartz, 1992). Overall, this review evaluates several key findings, including that the death penalty is a safe and effective means to prevent early detection, prevent imprisonment, and reduce future drug-related deaths (the largest study conducted on juvenile mortality) although it does not distinguish between alternatives to executions. 1.5.5 What is the role of juvenile mortality in death penalty-related deaths? A 1991 study in a Virginia prison found that juvenile mortality was 1.3 times greater than that from other sources. A 1992 study conducted by a Georgia prison found that juvenile mortality was 5.5 times greater between juveniles aged 17-22 (Cadgett). In 1986 several studies in Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Illinois were conducted. These studies included a survey of the juvenile population in a community correctional facility during a mandatory minimum security