Controversy and Debate
Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters crime, is a good tool for police and prosecutors (in plea bargaining for example), makes sure that convicted criminals do not offend again and is a just penalty for atrocious crimes such as child murders, serial killers or torture murderers. Opponents of capital punishment argue that not all people affected by murder desire a death penalty, that execution discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence" and that it violates human rights.
Read more about this topic: Death Penalty
Famous quotes containing the words controversy and/or debate:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people’s, preserve dignity.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)