Punishment for wrongdoing is necessary to maintain law and order in a society. The levels of punishment vary with the magnitude of the crime committed. Life sentences and capital punishment are some of the severe methods of punishment used in the United States. There have been heated debates on the effectiveness and morality of these methods. While some view life sentences and capital punishments as cruel and harsh, others believe criminals have to face the harshness of the law. A life sentence is a punishment of life imprisonment or confinement for a very long time. Capital punishment is the execution of a criminal by the state for a death sentence. More than 8500 people have been sentenced to death in the United States since the 1970s (Death Penalty Information Center, n.d.) . Once a jury convicts a defendant to a death sentence, the defendant is placed in death row during which he can make appeals. This procedure at times, goes on for long and can be traumatizing. The psychological effects of death row are fear and emotional emptiness (Smith, 2007).
Death row creates fear among the detainees. Criminals in death row are in permanent fear from the thought of waiting for their deaths. The waiting and uncertainty of the execution make it worse for them (Ciuca, 2015). They live in constant fear, and this attributes to a contemplation of suicide as an escape from this psychological torture.
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Death row causes emotional emptiness as a result of a decline in physical and psychological activity (Ciuca, 2015). Detainees feel emotionally depressed under harsh conditions of isolation. Detachment from society and mental decay result in loneliness and physical illness. The emotional emptiness of detainees in death row results in hopelessness and a reduction of self-worth.
In conclusion, death row has potential emotional and mental harm to detainees. The effectiveness of capital punishment is still in question. Capital punishment is intended to be swift and painless. However, death rows seem to worsen the process of execution because of the psychological torture of the detainee. Alternative methods should be pursued to enforce punishment ob criminals
References
Smith, A. (2007). Not “waiving” but drowning: The anatomy of death row syndrome and volunteering for execution. BU Pub. Int. LJ, 17, 237.
Ciuca, A. (2015). The Death Row: An Argument for Death Penalty Abolition?. Available at SSRN 2621583.
Death Penalty Information Center . (n.d.). Retrieved from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/sentencing-data
