India death penalty: Does it actually deter rape?

Rhett_Bassard

No, the death penalty does not deter rape [or other heinous crime].
Such criminals do not respect life and are unlikely to fear the lack of life.
Best not let them breed more of that behavior/trait.

Srinivas1939

A nice analysis 'The conclusion is unexceptionable.

GrimReaper

The title of the thread I chose to believe has two parts, and I will like to treat it as such.

Whether death penalty makes sense, and if it will deter rape.

To begin with, emotionally speaking, death penalty sense. But on a logical front, it is an understanding that after a crime is committed, the convict should be corrected and not punished. That is why we are calling prisons as reformatories. When we are killing someone off, especially in a fast track mode, we are denying the individual just that, a chance to become better. I will reiterate here, personally I feel, a mass murderer, serial sex-offender are sub-human and actually deserve punishment! But unfortunately, the Law is expected to take logic into account and not feelings and sentiments. So, in may corners of the world, capital punishment itself is under review.

Coming to the part about rapes, during the process of formulating a just punishment for any crime, it is important to understand the crime itself. Unfortunately, hundreds of years of research, worldwide having gone into this, experts are divided into understanding the psyche of a rapist. Nevertheless, acknowledging that it is a heinous crime we now need to statistics to understand does a strong punitive action actually stop the crime? History proves it does not.

As it has already been discussed in the forum, more often, the rich and the powerful actually escape but the poor are left to face the music. Also, a significant challenge of having capital punishment for rape is that now it equates it to murder and there will be a significant chance that the victim will be actually killed to prevent testimony and clearly, the punishments being the same, the perpetrator would perhaps be taking that path.