President of the United States

The White House

Washington, D.C.

Dear Future President:

I am concerned about several issues surrounding the death penalty: execution drug shortages, errors in death chambers, and legal challenges with sentences; which have all caused a decline in the number of executions. These incidents have caused the death penalty to slowly die out. Me along with 72% of Americans agree that the death penalty is an important thing to have in our country.

Many states are against it due to morality and the idea of control over the life or death of a human being. It is illegal in 19 states and legal in 31 states and Alaska, being a no death penalty state, has one of the highest murder rates in America. In 2014 they had a 5.6 million murder rate, ranking one of the 2nd highest in the US. This proves that the many people who say the death penalty has no effect are wrong. People are much less inclined to commit a violent crime when they know that they can face the death penalty.

Capital Punishment is the ultimate warning. When the government will stop at nothing to put someone liable for horrible crimes to death, it shows criminals how strict the system is; thus causing them to not want to commit those crimes. Also, when a criminal faces the death penalty for rape, murder, or any other horrific crime the victim has closure knowing that person can no longer do harm. If a person deprives someone of a loved one for no reason or ruins someone’s life with their inhumane actions, they should no longer be here. The danger of them escaping and something horrible happening is too much of a risk to take and also execution contributes to the problem of overpopulation in prisons. The grief of a victim may never end when the person responsible is killed, but there is certainly a feeling of closure and relief for victims of horrible crimes.

Data from the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) estimates that every inmate that enters jail costs taxpayers approximately $31,286, on average. These numbers are higher than necessary to protect public safety and the amount of people is slowly increasing. Penal Reform International states that at least 115 countries exceed the official prison capacity, which is so overcrowded the prisoners sleep in shifts. There are more jails than colleges in the US and more people are in prison in the US than the population of New Mexico. According to Business Insider this cost taxpayers $600 billion yearly and this money could be going somewhere else.

The whole justice system is based on fairness and having equal punishment to equal crimes. The most reasonable punishment against murder, or anything like murder, is execution. Without the death penalty, it could be said that the justice system makes no counter in response to the crime of murder; which provides no fair justice for the victim. Which is why it is so vital to our systems and does not need to be banned. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to hear about our concerns.

Sincerely,

Isis W.