The law judges crimes and political corruption. Sometimes however, there are people who commit heinous crimes that cannot be accepted as part of human behavior. Such heinous crimes include serial murder, sexual molestation of a child so on. These criminals have a high rate of second conviction after prison, while some are psychopaths. Thus, a number of nations feel uneasy about incarceration as a solution for these types of criminals and are looking for other ways to protect their citizens.

  Some countries impose a severe punishment called the death penalty upon brutal criminals. It literally means to execute a person as a means of punishment, but it is so controversial that many people around the world oppose the death penalty. Korea is not an exception. The people who are against the death penalty say things such as, "How can a human kill another human being and still be human?" or "A criminal's human rights are valuable too.”However, people who are proponents of the death penalty insist, "They must pay for their misdeeds!" or "If the death penalty is conducted in the right way, our society will be safer with the effect of decreasing the crime rate in the short term." While the two opinions are nip and tuck, the death penalty should be enforced to penalize these criminals completely and set citizens a national example at the same time. For example, the death penalty was effective for the prevention of crime in Houston, Texas, USA. In 1981, 701 murder cases took place in Houston, which held the record for the highest homicide rate in the USA. Texas revived the death penalty in 1982, and the murder rate in Harris County, Houston was reduced sharply. The surprising fact is that the 261 murders that were committed in 1996 was a 63% decrease from the number of murders in1981 when the death penalty wasn’t in place.

   It is natural to believe that all living things are important and valuable in modern society. However, it is doubtful whether we should respect someone who harms other lives and leaves victims with indelible scars. If the death penalty is restricted in law in the name of human rights, it removes the only means of obtaining justice.

 

 

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