If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn him the other also." Matthew 5:38-39.
What Jesus is trying to tell us is that if forgiveness is essential when dealing with criminals. We need to understand that they may have gone through a great deal in life and this is what occurred in the end. The concept of forgiveness is also discussed in The Parable of the Lost/Prodigal Son . We need to forgive people of their crimes before the criminal or us as the victim can heal. The important thing about forgiveness though is not to let people walk all over us. A punishment must go ahead to make the criminal realise what they have done is wrong and unacceptable and also to "balance out the evil" . Many of the things we do in our daily life to others we would not like done to us. If we believe that killing is wrong, then is cold-blooded execution the right punishment for murder. The same argument goes for arsonists - should they be burned and should rapists be raped? Of course people need punishment that fit the crime, but doing unto others such acts that we find wrong in the first place is hypocrisy. Many people say that prisons do not work because people re-offend soon after they are released - yet prisons work perfectly to some extent. People only re-offend because when they are released they have no skills or social contacts to help them become employed, or to start their life over. Then some other people say that capital punishment is much nicer to the criminals than long prison sentences. But death road is much more stressful than any prison sentence or anything similar to it. Both the above instances show us that prisons need to be improved before they become punishments that actually work. While in prisons people need to be rehabilitated as well as punished - this is what prisons should aim to do.
If capital punishment came into occurrence it would deter criminals from doing many crimes for a short period of time.