The Death Penalty should be abolished

Hi, I wanted to discuss a very important issue: the Death Penalty
As a progressive I'm against it and my view is getting more and more support as I see that those in favor of the Death Penalty have little or no valid argument.

Here are some fact:
_The Death Penalty costs more than life imprisonment
_There is absolutely no evidence that it deters crime (just look at crime rates in the US compared to Europe wich abolished it)
_For every 100 executed prisoners there are likely 4 innocent people being executed
_It diminishes society to the same moral level as the criminals
_Human behavior is mostly determined by the environment and can be changed by a caring environment (in approx. 80% of violent criminals)
-The countries who abolished it usually have lower crime rates then those who didn't
_The Death Penalty creates a society that promotes revenge and bloodthirst

After all these arguments I know no Death Penalty supporter who was able to give me a valid reason why I should support it. So I'm asking the the Death Penalty supporters in the Debate.org community if they are able to do so (I don't think so but I'm an open-minded individual)

Instigator - "The Death Penalty costs more than life imprisonment"

You use no statistics to back this claim, and this could very well be a fabrication. From what I have been able to find through research, there are varying opinions of people much smarter than me who study this for a living, and still can't agree to which is more expensive. - http://deathpenalty.procon.org...

Instigator - "There is absolutely no evidence that it deters crime (just look at crime rates in the US compared to Europe wich abolished it)"

There is also no evidence that it DOES'NT deter crime, so this statement is inadmissible and does not make a point either way. Furthermore, comparing US to Europe is impossible with such a broad statement. Crime rates are not solely affected by execution rates. Culture, economics, history, criminal laws all affect each country in different ways and they share very little with each other. If Europe's economy suddenly collapses, and mass criminal action starts occurring, can I use that as a "statistic" to back my argument even though the main effects are not pertaining to execution rates? No, because that doesn't make sense.

Instigator - "For every 100 executed prisoners there are likely 4 innocent people being executed."

And for every 100 executed prisoners, 96 of those were likely guilty... I am missing the point? I think what you were going for is determining an acceptable failure rate. If we determine that the death penalty is not worth it on the chance that we execute an innocent man, do we stop military action in town and cities across the world because the chance of civilian "innocent" casualties are too high? It would follow the same logic.

- It diminishes society to the same moral level as the criminals

Society is based on laws which restrict or enable its citizens to accomplish certain things with punishment or reward. The criminal has previous knowledge of the restrictions and consequences of the society he lives in before he determines his course of action. He makes his decision knowingly, and therefore accepts the consequences by doing so. If you take the opposite approach, and apply in a positive manner, should we restrict the consequences of people who do the right thing?
The reasoning behind "lowering society to the standards of the criminal" is vague and does not seem to apply directly to the actual issue of abolishing the death penalty or not. If the intent was to question the morality of killing someone, it should have been worded much differently.

Instigator - "Human behavior is mostly determined by the environment and can be changed by a caring environment (in approx. 80% of violent criminals)"

The Nature v Nurture argument is very much still just that: an argument. To make such a broad statement (80% figure) is very assuming in nature. But even so, this point in your argument defeats itself. If 80% of all violent criminals are able to be taught to be civilized, what about the other 20%? If you take all the violent criminals, and then the percentage of those which are executed, does that leave you with less than 20%? My guess is that is would.

Instigator - "The countries who abolished it usually have lower crime rates then those who didn't"

This is a repetition of a point you made earlier with Europe vs USA comparison.

Instigator - "The Death Penalty creates a society that promotes revenge and blood thirst."

Besides missing a vital word, I agree with this point. I would insert that "The Death Penalty HELPS create....". The question is, is that worth the results?

Well the Death Penalty does cost more. That is due to the numerous appeals. Now some Death Penalty supporters might say that prisoners shouldn't have those appeals. However if that were the case than approx. 30 out 100 prisoners would be wrongfully executed. In fact thanks to the appeals, about 30% of prisoners sentenced to death either get free due to lack of proof, or just have to serve some years in jail. So if we didn't permit those appeals we would be killing 30 possibly innocent people out of a hundred, and that is really unacceptable.

Now when it comes to the nature vs. nurture debate, I understand that you're concerned about the 20% that seem to never learn their lesson. But do you think that it's right to kill 100 prisoners knowing that 80 of them could potentially become model citizens, just to kill 20 that probably won't?
There is no reason to kill them, we can keep them in prison.

But then you said that keeping people in jail for the rest of their lives is more inhumane than killing them. I think that depends on what kind of prison you think of. Prison doesn't necessarily mean that we have to lock prisoners in a 10m2 cell all day. We could try the scandinavian model, where prisoners can participate in recreational activities that would also benefit the society they live in.

Now I know that the US vs. Europe example wasn't the best argument, but still in most european countries society tries to look at crime in a different way than in America. Instead of punishing criminals in the harshest way possible, society tries to help criminals become better persons, and we certainly won't make criminals better persons by killing them... So the US should definitely try that approach.

Also isn't it quite shameful that the US and Japan are the only two countries in the G8 to have Capital Punishment (especially if we consider that even Russia has a moratorium on it).