Can Death Penalty Reduce Drug-Related Crimes

    The President Elect asked the Senate to begin hearing on revival of the death penalty and recently, 217 law makers voted ‘yes’ to House Bill No. 4727. The House Bill would impose life sentence to death on drug-related offenses.*

The question now is, do reviving the death penalty a good measure on reducing drug-related crime in the country? Will the offenders concede from that crime in the presence of a death penalty?

The answer is no. It is proven that imposing death penalty on drug-related crime and other heinous act has no effect on reducing such.

Some studies suggest that death penalty is deterrent only if the criminals are vividly aware of its existence.

If we would mind the word ‘vividly’,it means that imposing death penalty to drug-related offenses will yield no significant difference in the number offenses with death penalty or none. It is because those persons involved in drug-related crimes are mostly illiterate. They can be easily persuaded to get in the multi-million illegal drug trade because they only know that the penalty exists but has no indepth understanding of its provision.

Social scientist gathered enough evidences leading them to a general conclusion that the "presence of death penalty does not influence crime rates". Some even found out that there is a "considerable rise in crime rates days after an execution" in some countries.

That means that the awareness presence and understanding of death penalty, on the other hand, may thrust the criminals to commit crimes that are more brutal because they are aware of the heavy punishment. It may lead to higher drug production and the drug pushers may be convinced enough to sell higher class of illegal drugs. They may form a mindset that the crime might be worth the penalty once they got caught.

Further more, the conclusion that the presence of death penalty will repel crimes is irrelevant today. It is based on the Theory of Deterrence which rests upon the belief that nothing is so sacred to an individual as his life.

            The said theory did not held up in any scientific study and hypothesis testing. It is because criminals are criminals. They are blind to the importance of life.

            Death penalty is not a good measure for drug-related crime reduction. It will only engender damages to  innocent persons due to weakness of our judiciary system.

REFERENCES:

*House OKs Death Penalty - http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/03/02/1677123/house-oks-death-penalty 

**Dononhue and Wolfers (2006) The death penalty: no evidence for deterrence. The Berkeley Electronic Press. Economists` Voice www.bepress.com/ev retrieved http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/pdf/DonohueDeter.pdf March 30, 2017 

***Death Penalty Doesn`t Deter Crimes - https://www.aclu-de.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Death-Penalty-Doesnt-Deter-Crime.pdf

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