Child Offenders should not be Put to Death

The present demonstrates categorically that the death penalty is NOT an effective deterrent for any crime, let alone those committed by children. If it was, no-one would be committing any of the crimes potentially leading to such a result. As such, the only valid reason to impose it as a judicial sentence on any person at all, is to ensure that that person never again commits that crime, to protect future potential victims.

In that regard, it will quite obviously be totally effective. Dead people do not repeat their crimes. But that does necessitate being absolutely certain that the person accused is actually guilty of the crime and not simply a convenient scapegoat shanghaied by law enforcement agencies feeling pressured to find a culprit by public demand. Something that past experience has unfortunately too often evidenced. Too many convicted of savage crimes being found innocent by DNA evidence later, and yet so often nothing further seems to occur afterward to find the actual perpetrator.

Obviously, if we kill children for their abhorrent crimes, they will not commit any further crimes. But is that really what we want to say about our society? That our society is so inherently bad that some of our children grow up so evil that we must kill them to protect ourselves from their actions. That their lives have led them to be so psychotic that they are beyond redemption?

If even children can become so evil in our society that they can not be redeemed, are beyond saving, then why should we believe adults can be rehabilitated? If we truly believe that we must execute children for the horrific crimes they have committed, we might as well start handing out the death penalty to most convicted adults as well!

It is becoming far too common in the society of today for children to commit truly horrendous and downright evil crimes. Instead of deciding to kill all those that do so, perhaps we should start doing something about the circumstances that result in children growing up with the attitudes and abilities to enact such evils in the first place. Perhaps we should start trying to create a more harmonious and decent society, instead of one that consistently encourages greed and selfishness, arrogance and hate for those different to ourselves.

There are indeed, far too many people, of whatever age, committing appallingly horrendous crimes in every nation on this planet, our home-world Earth. Harsher and harsher jail terms and capital punishments are quite clearly NOT resolving this issue; making such punishments more severe and more encompassing is not going to change this.

We have a society overloaded by advertising that espouses self-centered greed; the advertising proclaimed over every available means of communication consistently tells us that treating others badly to benefit ourselves is not only the clever thing to do, but perfectly moral as well! How can we possibly condone the killing of those that heed this message, whether they are adults or children?

If we really have to start killing (executing) members of our society, perhaps we should start with the stunningly large number of political, financial, business and religious leaders who have made the grotesque, self-centered, short term decisions that have resulted in the evils our societies now face. Many of whom are the very people that disenfranchise the majority and decry the activities of otherwise decent people that their uncaring attitudes and decisions have driven into economic despair.

We are capable of so much better than the world we allow to be around us. The dominating tyrants of the world do not only live in those countries striving against them in what is called the Arab Spring. The world belongs to all of us, there is absolutely no justification in a small number of arrogant dominators controlling ludicrous amounts of the world’s, and therefore everyone’s, resources. There is absolutely no ethical validity for any person to have control over billions of dollars of the world’s resources; such domination is outright evil!