Title: 
Headings: 
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
Punishment in General
Aims of Punishment
What People Think
ETHICAL ISSUES
Retribution
Social Contract
Rights Forfeiture
Utilitarianism
Deterrence
PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES
Proportionality
Executing the Innocent
Racial Bias
COMMON ARGUMENTS PRO AND CONTRA
The Conservative Position
The Liberal Position
A Moderate Compromise
READING 1: BECCARIA AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY (On Crimes and Punishment, 1764)
We Do not Give Up our Right to Life
Only One Justification of Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment Does Not Deter
Advantages of Long-Term Imprisonment
Long-Term Imprisonment Counteracts the Easy Security of Religious Repentance
Harmful Effects of the Death Penalty
Overcoming the Tradition of the Death Penalty and Inspiring Rulers to Change
STUDY QUESTIONS

Content: Once inside the Castle, he tortured and killed them, and sometimes dissected their bodies, selling their skeletons to medical schools. When eventually arrested on charges of insurance fraud, police linked him to the murder of his business associate, and in the course of their investigation they discovered the Murder Castle. There they found bones of many victims mixed together, a dissection table covered with blood, and burnt body parts. Mudgett confessed to 27 murders, writing a detailed account of those activities, but the actual number may have reached over 100. He was tried, then hanged. When reading accounts of serial killers like Mudgett, we often have a sense of satisfaction that he was caught and executed. Some people are so irredeemable and their actions so horrendous that we feel that justice demands that they die. The death penalty, we think, is a critical part of the criminal justice system, specifically reserved for the worst possible offenders. The death penalty has been common practice around the world as far back as history records, and it is easy to imagine primitive social environments in which dwellers would have no choice but to kill criminals. Nomadic tribes, for example, would lack permanent facilities to lock up murderers and thieves, and setting offenders free would only give them a chance to do more damage.