One day Timmy is asked if he believes the death penalty stops criminals, he says no because it didn't stop criminals from killing his parents for their money. Most people who think the death penalty is effective usually don't know all the facts or how much time and money goes into putting someone on death row. In our reading, good arguments are presented for and against the effects of the death penalty. Ernest Van den Haag argues that we should continue to use the death penalty, while Hugo Adam Bedau believes that it is obsolete and that we should cease its use. I think both arguments are convincing, but Bedau's argument has statistics to support its logic. I believe the death penalty would be acceptable if there were no alternatives, but since we can keep convicts in prison for life there is no need for the death penalty. Ernest Haag believes that criminal punishment has a more deterrent effect on crime than life imprisonment. Candies. He states that “science, logic, or statistics have often been unable to demonstrate what common sense tells us is true” (355). I agree that you can't directly measure the deterrent, but you can measure many other factors. For example, Hugo Bedau's argument states: “During the 1980s, death penalty states had an average annual rate of 7.5 criminal homicides per 100,000 inhabitants; abolitionist states recorded an average rate of 7.4” (361). These statistics show that the death penalty is not a real deterrent for criminals. When people commit a crime for which they could be sentenced to death, they either don't plan to get caught or simply don't think about it at all. This point is also emphasized in Bedau's argument, I believe that knowing that is reason enough to stop using the death penalty. In Haag…half the paper…about six times the cost of life-prison sentence” (365) Some may argue that the occasional chance of an innocent person losing their life is acceptable because the death penalty is a deterrent for many people, but that's not the case at all. In conclusion, I firmly believe that the death penalty is wrong and should be ended as soon as possible. It can be clearly seen that a better argument is presented against the death penalty than that presented in its favor. We now have the means to keep people in prison for life and I believe that this is enough, especially when there is a risk that an innocent person will be killed through the death penalty. Since there is evidence to show that the death penalty is obsolete, it should be stopped as it only increases the death toll. I think the idea of ​​giving people the power to end someone's life is crazy because no one is perfectly pure.