Advantages and disadvantages of life imprisonment over death penalty

Advantages of life imprisonment over death penalty

• Prisoner suffers for a longer period of time compared to death that is instant. Prisoners on life sentence usually experience a long period of torture due to confinement.
• Life imprisonment protects the family members from emotion trauma that they would experience during the extermination of their beloved ones.
• It may allow time for the prisoner to pursue justice in case of haste judgment leading conviction of innocent person. There are several documented cases where innocent persons were put death.
• It is considered barbaric to put to death a person by firing squad, electric chair, lethal injection in the public.
• Life imprisonment may give an opportunity to the convict to counsel the public against the committing offences.
• Life imprisonment may give an opportunity to convict whose sentence was politically motivated to be pardoned in case of government changed.
• It against the bible teaching to kill, the reason why many people are against it.
• Life imprisonment rather than death penalty reduces court time and costs through endless appeals.

Disadvantages of life imprisonment over death penalty

• The victim’s family may not be satisfied with the punishment and may resort to take up revenge themselves.
• Life imprisonment may not be deterrent enough to prevent further commitment of the offence
• Life imprisonment tends to sympathize with criminal than with the victims. Death sentence would provide justice for the current and past victims of a serial killer.
• A convict on life imprisonment sentence may have a chance to escape and repeat the same offences.
• Life imprisonment increases the costs of running prisons and may lead to overcrowding.
• It is unnecessarily punitive, especially for non-violent crimes, and does not satisfy the principle of proportionality.

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Thanks

Dr. Bbosa Science