Capital punishment.

There is a national debate whether capital punishment should be abolished in our country. This topical issue has divided Polish society into two opposing groups. As far as my opinion is concerned, I am totally against the death penalty for several reasons.

The first reason is that every man dies naturally sooner or later and that is why it is absurd to employ death as a punishment. From a logical point of view it is not, in fact, any punishment since death is a natural consequence of birth, it is a law to which all human beings are submitted. The only thing that matters here is time. From the ethical point of view capital punishment is inhumane. It is so because a judge, an executioner and all the other people directly or indirectly involved in bringing about a verdict often have doubts as to whether they did the right thing and this weighs on their conscience to the end of their lives. Sometimes they suffer even more than the criminals and it should not be so. Why should man take part in such a cruel practice as depriving someone of his life? So many people die every day of cancer, AIDS, or heart attacks, so many are killed in accidents that we should not add to the list of the dead by inflicting capital punishment.

What is more, it has not been proved that the death penalty intensifies the disinclination to commit crimes and, therefore, it cannot be regarded as a major deterrent. In fact, capital punishment has never protected anyone.

Another key issue is whether the death penalty is appropriate for the crime committed. In my opinion a criminal should rather expiate his deed by working very hard to the end of his life. Sometimes a life-sentence is a harsher punishment than death. History also knows hundreds of cases of criminals who changed for the better and we can only feel sorry for those condemned to death who were not given any chance to improve.

It is easy to say: "He richly deserves his punishment". Society seems to be very severe on criminals. However, people do not always realize that they are themselves to blame because on one hand they cannot eliminate such social injustices which lead to crime as overcrowding, penury or broken homes and on the other hand they are too liberal in treating criminals as heroes and glorifying them in the mass media.

Another argument for abolishing the death penalty comes from the fact that such practices as hanging or electric chairs seem to be barbaric in the enlightened and civilized twentieth century.

Finally, human life is of outstanding value and no man has the right to deprive another man of this value.