Another one where I've been meaning to write something grand and profound, but am heeding my own advice and just writing something, knowing I can rewrite it or add more details later

We should abolish the death penalty. It's abhorrent and outdated.

What happens when we mess up? When we sentence an innocent person to death? There's no coming back from that.

The Cost

In America, it costs more to execute someone than it does to keep them in prison for life. Part of the reason for this is bureaucracy. You could argue that the solution is not to stop killing people, but to become more efficient at doing it.

I would ask you "Why would we want to be more efficient at killing people?". That's not a goal I have, that does not work towards any of my values.

In The Grapes of Wrath, there's a part where Steinbeck points out that organizations (he's talking about banks, but I'll extend to countries) can want things that none of the people who make up that organization want:

(See the full quote here). Some people have taken to calling this force Moloch. I don't want to kill people, and I don't want to facilitate living in an organization that makes that easier.

Deterrence

Death does not appear to actually deter crime.

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology:

“Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the world’s top criminologists believe that the empirical research has revealed the deterrence hypothesis for a myth… 88.2% of polled criminologists do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent… 9.2% answered that the statement ‘[t]he death penalty significantly reduces the number of homicides’ was accurate… Overall, it is clear that however measured, fewer than 10% of the polled experts believe the deterrence effect of the death penalty is stronger than that of long-term imprisonment… Recent econometric studies, which posit that the death penalty has a marginal deterrent effect beyond that of long-term imprisonment, are so limited or flawed that they have failed to undermine consensus.

In short, the consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment.”

2009

If it doesn't stop crime, why are we even discussing this?

See Also

Violence, specifically that it should only be directed upwards (a la "punching up" in comedy).