Death penalty is also known as capital punishment, and it is a kind of punishment approved by the government whereby criminals are punished by death. However, the death penalty has been a controversial topic for ages, and various countries have different views on death penalty. While many countries have outlawed death penalty, other countries such as United States (Soss, Langbein and Metelko 398) and Japan are still using death penalty to punish criminals. The purpose of implementing death penalty is to punish those criminals declared guilty of murder or other flagitious crimes to set an example to other people in the society with such or even worse crimes.
United States and Japan are still using death penalty as a mode of punishment to criminals. For instance, fourteen executions have so far been carried out in some States of United States this year (Death penalty information center. Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6495). In most cases, Japan and United States endorse death punishment to criminals who commit murder or other crimes that put people’s lives at risk (Banner and Stuart 34). Therefore, the reason as to why these nations still endorse death penalty is to impose a stern warning to anybody who wishes to endanger the lives of American people as well as the Japanese, so as not to destabilize these peaceful nations. Besides, it is the best weapon of retribution as well as instilling fear to the criminals to confess what they have done.
However, the death penalty policies seem to change in the near future in both United States and Japan. This is because, regardless of the fact that United States endorses death penalty, not every citizen is into it, and so is Japan. U.S Supreme Court declared that death penalty is cruel (Latzer 34), and still, other people believe that it is not the best form of fighting for justice. Besides, there is a likelihood of falsifying suspect’s information, thus ending up killing innocent people for crimes they did not commit. Therefore, sooner or later, everything will change in U.S and Japan, and the death penalty policies will be altered if people continue pushing against it.
Works Cited
Banner, Stuart, and Stuart Banner. The death penalty: An American history. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Latzer, Barry. Death penalty cases: Leading US Supreme Court cases on capital punishment. Elsevier, 2010.
Soss, Joe, Laura Langbein, and Alan R. Metelko. "Why do White Americans Support the Death Penalty?." Journal of Politics 65.2 (2003): 397-421.
