In researching the death penalty I have come across many informative and helpful sites dealing with the death penalty. Hopefully they will be of help if you wish to learn more.
One such site was the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a national grass roots organization centered around the abolition of the death penalty. It offers facts, statistics, opinions, information about events, videos and stories of those on death row, as well as compelling arguments about the death penalty. The organization also sends out news letters and is always trying to get people to join the movement.
The most useful site I found was the Death Penalty Information Center, or the DPIC. The site offers an extremely large amount of information about the death penalty, from the very beginning to today. There are state by state breakdowns of executions, it tells of other countries, basically, it had everything I could even think of. If you need information, this is the site to explore.
Race, Racism, and the Law, is a site created by The University of Dayton: School of Law. It has information and racism and the death penalty as researched by graduate students and professors. It is very informative and the information given was thorough, but easy to understand.
I found a site called Pro and Con: The Death Penalty in Black and White, a short but none the less helpful analysis. The author is the vice president of a victims rights group called Justice for All. I found that his ideas where not what I had been looking for, but rather made me think. It offers another side of the argument, the one in favor of the death penalty. He had the same information, but interpreted it to suit his beliefs.
I came across articles from a newsletter entitled, Counter Punch: America's Best Political Newsletter." It offered many opinions and sides of the issue that I found helpful when trying to form my argument. It's tag line is "Tells the Facts, and Names the Names." In reading it this seems to be quite true of the site, it has a lot to offer.
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a broad site, not dedicated solely to the death penalty, but with good information concerning it. From the home page if you click on the Crime Policy Issue it takes you to a screen where you can then click on the death penalty. The article I found most helpful was the Myth of Racism in the Death Penalty.
I found information regarding the history of the death penalty across the world from a site that deals with crime rates and statistics from across the globe. It also dealt with the earliest executions, as well as ones since then.
A useful site I found was the Community Service Society. Though it deals solely with statistical data from the State of New York, the information is relative to the country as a whole. It talks about how the death penalty is a flawed institution, attacking not only minorities, but the socioeconomically challenged as well.
Think Progress is a website that deals with issues of change. It deals with issues of global leadership, healthy communities, and social and economic justice. The site is composed of many writers and information on a wealth of topics can easily be found. The death penalty was one of those such topics.
Death Penalty Focus was a great site about the death penalty. The organization was founded in 1988 and is now one of the largest non-profit organizations dedicated to the abolition of the death penalty in the nation. It is a well researched and official grass-roots movement that offers a large amount of information on the death penalty and its supposed flaws.
All of these sites I found helpful when trying to find information and formulate my opinion. If you care to research any farther they all should be of use.
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3 comments:
Did you find most of these websites being opinionated? Leaning towards one side maybe or just informational statistics on the matter?
I personally believe that death penalty should exist although sometimes, but very infrequently it is wrong, I believe it is a way to rid our world of those who commit the most gruesome and appalling crimes. These people dont deserve to live because what they did was so inhumane that they no longer are worthy of life, because mainly these people took away the lives of others. I believe that this is not going to rid us of all the evil people of the world but it eliminates the possibility and the fear of people like this.
Yes, I did find that most websites were opinionated. It was difficult to find ones that weren't. One in particular that just told the facts was DPIC- the Death Penalty Information Center. Though it just presented the facts I still felt that it was a bit biased, but just because the information seems like a persuasive argument. The statistics the website presented seemed so blatantly racist that it almost felt opinionated though it's just the facts.
I realize I could have made the sites better defined about their stance on the issue and will go back and make that clear.
Also, I agree with your statement that "very infrequently it is wrong," but only is it wrong in the aspect that it rarely kills innocent people. It is frequently wrong in who it kills. The way it is issued is so random and flawed that you are more likely to get struck by lightning than to murder someone and get the death penalty.
Yes these people took away the lives of others, but that doesn't give us a nation the right to take away theirs.
The DPIC is one of the most deceptive of the anti death penalty sites.
For example, their 124 exonerated innocents. Possibly, there might be 20-25 actually innocent people sent to death row since 1973. They have all been released.
The death penalty also saves additional innocent lives in two ways: Enhanced incapacitation and enhanced deterrence.
We know that living murderers murder and harm again: They murder in prison, they murder after release, and they murder after escape. Executed murderers never murder again.
We can speculate about the possibility of innocent people being executed, but there is no proof of that having happened in the U.S. since 1900. In contrast, we know people have been murdered by known murderers who we’ve allowed to live.
The death penalty also serves as a deterrent. Virtually all of those convicted of murder seek a life sentences rather than death. That tells us they fear death more than a life sentence, and that the death penalty must act as a deterrent. 12 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, confirm this,
Sparing murderers sacrifices more innocent lives.
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