The Death Penalty

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the issue of the death penalty raises deep emotions on all sides of the debate because many people feel that the death penalty no longer holds value as a tool for society to prevent heinous crimes. The author points out that the primary support for the death penalty tends to come from law enforcement groups that believe society has a right to exact retribution from lawbreakers through capital punishment. The paper concludes that capital punishment carries with it a sense of finality and lack of forgiveness that modern society has a difficult time accepting because today s social systems want to see justice, restoration, and a hope for rehabilitation.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Social Theory Supporting and Opposing the Death Penalty
Supportive Theory
Opposition to the Death Penalty
Deterrence
Restorative Justice
A Mistake that Cannot be Reversed
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Only a century ago, when our nation was considerably more religious in practice and social paradigm, his kind of argument was dominant among those favoring the death penalty. Religious people understood, and believed that a measure of justice and punishment for wrong behavior was an important foundational principle on which civilized people built. Orthodox Presbyterian and Congregationalist clergymen constantly advanced this perspective against the more humanistic theology pressed by Unitarians, Universalists and the Quakers."

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