Society has always employed different kinds of punishments in an effort to prevent potential criminals from committing crimes. In other words, there is always a drive to prevent future harm by learning from the mistakes of today. In this regard, the society has a fervent interest in protecting people's lives from murderers. The best way to prevent murder is to use the strongest form of punishment which is the death penalty (Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty). Evidence from numerous studies has proved that the death penalty has an inherent ability to deter would-be murderers from committing heinous crimes. .
In fact, the incapacitative benefits of the death penalty occur in two ways. Firstly, by apprehending and executing convicted murderers, the death penalty totally eliminates any possibility of the criminal going back to the streets and killing again (Ogloff and Honeyman). Apart from this aspect referred to as specific deterrence, the death penalty has an even wider scope of incapacitative benefits through general deterrence. This is because by executing people convicted of committing horrific murders, potential murderers would be restrained from killing people since they are conscious of what will come over them (Cassell and Bedau 32). With that said, community members still need to prepare themselves for the consequences they will be facing.
Some opponents of the death penalty are of the opinion that the concept of deterrence rests on a shaky ground since it assumes that people always think before acting, so that their actions depend on their rational evaluation of the consequences. According to them, the assumption made here is that murderers will always think rationally before committing a crime and thus will opt not to commit murder in view of the imminent outcome which is the death penalty. In this regard, opponents of the death penalty nullify this assumption by noting that not all homicides are committed under circumstances that allow rational evaluation of the consequences.
