Capital Punishment:
A View of the punishments in America today:
Capital Punishment by definition is the term used for the death penalty. Capital punishment is the most extreme of all sentencing options. In the United States capital punishment is legal in thirty-nine of the fifty states. Beginning in 1973, prison populations began a sure growth. There were 204,211 inmates in 1973, and by 1977 the number of prisoners had grown to 285,456, which later grew to 315,974 in 1980. By 1976, it was clear that the death penalty had to be reinstated. America's twenty-one year experiment with capital punishment has resulted in a total of 392 executions, seventy eight of which took place in 1996 alone. Of these only thirty-four were federal cases, out of which thirty two were male and only two were female.
Every year about 15,000 killers are charged and only about 300 wind up on death row. The death row population is constantly increasing. It is now more than 3,000. Because of......
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Approximate Word Count: 2066
Approximate Pages: 8 (260 words per double-spaced page) |