Does the Death Penalty have any Value in a Modern Judicial System?

I have always shied away from taking a firm stance either for or against Capital Punishment, believing the margin for error in the Justice System to be far too high for us mere mortals, each with our own biases and prejudices, to toy with the lives of potential innocents. In the past I have attempted to approach the subject with the view that every life is sacred and that no man has the right to end another's life regardless of the crime committed, I realise now after much deliberation that this is a rather naive way of thinking.

On average, 6,000 sexual predators are convicted every 3 years in the UK, that's around 2,000 convictions per year. Places in prison run between £30,000 on average, to £59,000 for the most dangerous offenders. This means that the British taxpayer has to fork over an additional £780m each year, on top of the existing expenditure to house current inmates, in order to keep our streets safe from the worst, most vile members of society: murderers, rapists & paedophiles. These figures, as you would expect, are perpetually on the rise as each new year brings fresh convictions and more bodies to cram into the already overloaded prison system.

Let us imagine such a criminal sentenced to life imprisonment at 21 years of age, having never been granted parole the years pass on by until our convict drops dead at the ripe old age of 71, 40 years have passed and (without adjusting for inflation.) our hypothetical criminal has cost the system £1,560,000... for what? One and a half million for a prisoner to spend a lifetime reflecting on what an atrocious act they committed? So they regret what they did and feel remorse after a few years spent pissing in a tin toilet and staring at breeze-blocks, who gives a toss?

If we continue to be such squeamish babies when discussing these issues then the punishments handed out to the worst offenders will continue to be pointless money wasting exercises that set out to prove just how humane and compassionate we are as a nation, a hard pill to swallow whilst in the midst of a bombing campaign in the Middle East, but that's a topic for another rant.

When death is the outcome anyway, there is nothing compassionate about dragging it out and prolonging the whole process from the prisoner's point of view and I'm sure the treasury could benefit as well from having fewer inmates clogging up the system. This ceases to be a question of what is morally right and wrong when we consider morality a simple invention of man in an indifferent universe, this should instead be a question of what is and isn't desirable within our society and how best to protect those who are most vulnerable within it.

Now, don't twist my words here, I'm not suggesting we incorporate the death penalty back into our legal system without first having an in-depth look at the pros and cons or out of some sort of misplaced anger and thirst for revenge directed towards sexual predators or the like. Paedophilia is something which should be thought of like a cancerous tumour, our job is not to blindly prosecute those who commit the acts due to our own understanding of what is morally right and wrong but rather prevention, the causes should be examined and research carried out so that we can better understand the behaviour and cognitive functions of those who commit the most despicable crimes so that we can treat and eradicate the symptoms like we would any other disease.

This isn't to say we should excuse the perpetrators of these crimes as if they were victims themselves who needed help, only that we should overcome our gut instinct of wanting to exact revenge and inflict just punishment on those we feel deserve it and instead seek to understand and prevent similar actions in the future because personally, I would take more consolation in knowing my children were free from harm's way than in having the power to flip a switch and fry the attacker's brains after the fact, once the act has been committed and irrevocable damage already done.

There is no need however to study and research each and every single convict therefore a balance must be found between those we choose to allow to remain alive for the purposes of science and those which we discard of like we would any other broken or faulty object in order to free up space within the system and also monetary funds within the government that could be better spent elsewhere. The danger that remains is in deciding what is and isn't desirable in society and what is considered cause for this most extreme form of punishment however we must proceed with caution given that their is no universal standard for what different cultures and demographics deem desirable or acceptable and people will always hold polarizing views on such matters, this also becomes even riskier territory to chart when we bear in mind that many a dictator got their start in trying to eliminate what they thought of as undesirable through means of experimentation and capital punishment.

It would appear the arguments for both sides still have many more kinks that need ironing out before we can come to a definite conclusion however, I wouldn't write the death penalty off entirely as a viable means of punishment in today's age, it would appear she may still have some life in her yet.