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Outline For Death Penalty Research Paper

Satisfactory Essays

I. The death penalty does not deter crime and has no beneficial effect on murder rates.
A. Studies show that there’s no proven correlation between using the death penalty and deterrence of crime.
1. A New York Times survey demonstrated that the homicide rate in states with capital punishment have been 48% to 101% higher than those without the death penalty.
2. Many researchers say deterrence data is “fraught with technical and conceptual errors, including inappropriate methods of statistical analysis, and failures to consider all relevant factors that drive murder rates.”
B. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime.
1. A survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty …show more content…

The New York Department of Correctional Services estimated thatimplementing the death penalty would cost the state about $118 million annually.
2. In Texas, a death penalty case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.
B. The funds used for the death penalty should be used towards other positive educational programs within the community.
1. State programs that successfully address the underlying, contributing factors to crime and violence already exist, but they do not receive sufficient resources.
2. Evidence-based research suggests that children who receive early education are less likely to become criminals, which not only benefits society, but also saves the state money.
III. The inevitability of factual, legal, and moral errors results in a system that must wrongly kill some innocent defendants.
A. The wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that could never be rectified.
1. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, 138 innocent men and women have been released from death row, including some who came within minutes of

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