Is capital punishment wrong?

How should criminals be punished? well,I had to to an assignment for religious education recently and thought that I might just publish this on ciao to see what sort of level I should get for this assignment, be as truthfully honest and brutal as you must please. Thanks.

Introduction

Muslims, Christians, and even non religious people all have different views on how criminals should be punished. Like if we asked three different religious people questions, what would their answers be to the questions? For example, we could ask them which crimes should be punished more than others and how should they be punished. And I can bet you that they'd all have different answers to each other. Christians are the more the forgiving the criminals type, whereas Muslims believe in giving the criminal his/her justice that they deserve. Non religious people are mixed between the two views. A crime is something that is against a law, religion or a community. Punishment is something that is used to stop and help people who break these laws and rules. Muslims and Christians have different views; because they're religion have different views, opinions and stories in it. For example, Jesus said in one of the new testament stories in the bible that you should always forgive someone, no matter what they do or how many times in which they do it. Whereas, in the Qur'an, Muslims are taught that everyone should be treated the same and should be punished for what they have done wrong, for example there is a story in the Qur'an where an important woman committed a crime and got the same punishment as a poor beggar.

The Christian views

Christians mainly, to sum up in one sentence, believe in forgiving others, no matter what they do wrong. Although we prejudge people, Christians are all the same really, although some have a stronger faith, and others don't agree with forgiving everyone for what they have done in the past, or may well do. They believe that reforming a person to they're good formal state is better than giving them justice for what they have done. For example, Gordon Wilson, who had his daughter killed in a terrorist attack. She was killed in a parade in Ireland by a terrorist bomb. A few hours later, he went to the papers and news reporters and said to them all, that he forgives the terrorists for doing this. He was a true Christian believer and did this because he thought it was the right thing to do and being bought up in a religious background, he was obviously taught that forgiving someone was the best thing to do.

The Muslim views

The Shariah law states that people should be punished for he following things, adultery (having affairs), murder (taking the life of someone should lead to your own life being taken away), and alcohol and drug usage or makeage (as these things can lead to family break ups, and other severe problems) if any of these are done or seen doing or even proven, the people who have done these things should be punished and for things like murder, they should as I have mentioned have their life taken away from them. Not all Muslims have the same views though, for example, some may have views like for things like adultery, where people should not be punished, whereas for things like murder, they must be punished straight away. Some Muslims may also think that that forgiveness is the way forward; it just depends in what you believe in and how strong a believer you are in it.

My views and conclusion

All in all, being a non believer in religion and a non religious person I am, I don't think that capital punishment should come back in this country, because innocent people die. For example Derek Bentley who was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't even commit. his so called best friend shot the police officer, but because he was under age and had been in the wrong place at the wrong time in another crime, he got sentanced to death. his family are still battling it out with the courts to get his name cleared of the crime at least. Life is way too short to kill innocent people, trying to get on with their ordinary normal lives. If one in eight people killed are innocent, then out of the 3,500 people currently on death row in America, then 438 of them are innocent, imagine 438 of your school, that's more than your year group put together and in five years, that's your whole school wiped out. Also, imagine if one of those people was you? I can understand why people want the death penalty to come back in this country, because in a lot of countries, it does help keep the crime rate down, but in America, it has been proven that the crime rates are still the same. I think that corporal punishment should maybe come back, to get people to tell the truth and be used as a deterrent, but only in cases like murder, rape, and pedophiles. Otherwise, the other crimes should be punished in some way, but in a lighter form where they can be reformed, like the Christian views say. But I agree with the Muslim views where they say that people should be punished for they're sins and wrong doings to stop them from doing it again, but how do criminals get a second chance, if they don't have a second life when they're life is taken away from them? For terrorism, if they are sentenced to death, they are like a god in their own community for dieing for what they believe in, whereas if they get they're freedom taken away, they are more likely to be punished and upset about it.

Most non religious people don't actually know what to think or believe in one idea and so are mixed between the two ideas of justice, - the criminal getting what they deserve, and giving the criminals a second chance

The future for crime and punishment

To be honest what with terrorism and crime rates going up, I think that n the future, they will have to either build more prisons or bring in more punishments like capital and corporal punishments, but because most of Britain is made of Christians, they won't actually bring it in because the Christians will protest hat criminals should be forgiven and given a second and maybe even a third or forth chance. This lets them get away with more and more each time and they could go on committing crimes, showing everyone that they can get away with it. But if, for example one day the government brings back the whip or even the death penalty, then it's going to cause a huge stir in the Christian faith and we will finally see if the corporal and capital punishments do make a difference to our crime rates.

thanks for reading

angiex