Kimberly Ferrell
Professor Sanders
English 1301, Section 341
9 December 2010 A Vicious Cycle of Anger and Hatred

The eighth amendment is designed to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. Conservation of the United States Constitution, and all moral ideologies have been set aside. An old form of barbaric punishment and the saying "eye for an eye" is still being widely accepted by Americans today. The old form of barbaric punishment is capital punishment. No matter how "humane" the death penalty has become, it is still the killing of another human being. When people stand outside prisons and cheer that an individual was murdered, there is a problem. When people justify the killing of another person, there …show more content…

Also, capital punishment is completely abolished in Europe and they experience a far less murder rate than the United States. In addition to the statistics that crumble the theory of deterrence, a 1995 poll by Hart Research Associates found that an alarming "one percent of the nation's police chiefs believe that the death penalty actually reduces the number of homicides" (Jackson, Shapiro 26). There is only one definite deterrent of capital punishment and that is the prevention of that person ever killing again. Above all, it can be assumed that the majority of Americans cringe at the reality that the money they pay in taxes goes towards feeding and housing murderers. In recent years, the United States has been faced with a major problem of prison overcrowding. In 2001, state prisons were operating from one to sixteen percent over capacity and federal prisons were operating at an estimated thirty one percent above capacity. It costs on average twenty thousand dollars a year to keep an inmate in prison. With so many prisoners and so much money going towards housing them it only makes sense to kill them. Wrong. A common misconception is that if our prison system executes more inmates we will be saving money, but on the contrary it actually costs more money to keep an inmate on death row. California's commission on the Fair Administration of Justice estimates that the state is spending about one hundred and thirty eight million dollars a year on