DOES POLICING AFFECT CRIME?

Does policing affect crime?

Does policing affect crime?

Introduction

Since the 1970s almost all capital sentences in the United States have been imposed for homicide. There has been intense debate regarding the constitutionality, effect, and humanity of capital punishment; critics charge that executions are carried out inconsistently, or, more broadly, that they violate the "cruel and unusual punishment" provision of the Eighth Amendment. Supporters of the death penalty counter that this clause was not intended to prohibit executions. (Deflem, 2006)

Literatrure review

Punishments are imposed on person, not on racial or economic groups. Guilt is personal. The only relevant question is; does the person to be executed deserve the punishment? Whether or not others who deserved the same punishment, whatever their economic or racial group, have avoided execution is irrelevant. If they have, the culpability if the executed convicts would not be ostracized, nor would their punishment be less deserved. To put the issue downright, if the death penalty were imposed on guilty blacks, but not on guilty whites, or, if it were imposed by a lottery among the guilty, this irrationally discriminatory or careless distribution would neither make the penalty unjust, nor cause anyone to be unjustly punished, despite the undue impunity bestowed on others. (Deflem, 2006)

Equality, in short, seems morally less important than justice. And justice is independent of distribution inequalities. The ideal of equal justice demands that justice be equally distributed, not that it be replace by equality. Justice requires that as many of the guilty as possible be punished, regardless of whether others have avoided punishment. To let these others escape the deserved punishment does not do justice to them, or to society. But it is not unjust to those who could not escape. (Deflem, 2006)

Common sense indicates that it cannot be death-- our common fate, which is inhuman. Therefore, death demotes when it comes not as a natural or accidental event, but as an intentional social imposition. The murderer learns through his punishment that his fellow men have found him unworthy of living; that because he has murdered, he is being expelled from the community of the living. This degradation is self-inflicted. By murdering, the murderer has so dehumanized himself that he cannot remain among the living. The social recognition of his self-degradation is the ambiguous essence of execution. To believe that the degradation is imposed by the execution reverses the direction of casualty. (Garland, 2002)

Execution of those who have committed atrocious murders may deter only one murder per year. If it does, it seems quite warranted. Its is also the only fitting vengeance for murder I can think of. By reason of the rapid increase in crime the past ten years and prison overcrowding, more concentration has been drawn to the opinion that something has to be done to the United States Criminal System. We need to reexamine the way we treat people we are convicted of unspeakable acts of pitiless slaughter or even rape. The United States Justice System must be made ...