Death Penalty Should Be Abolished in Taiwan
The controversy over death penalty has been lasting for a long period. Death penalty, also called capital punishment, is the practice of executing criminals to death as a punishment for committing a serious crime. According to the report of Amnesty International in 2018, there are 106 countries in the world abolishing the death penalty completely. However, Taiwan is one of the few countries that still allows death penalty and has executions in recent years. Although most people in Taiwan are opposed to abolishing the death penalty, there are several reasons why death penalty should be abolished in Taiwan.
First, human rights, especially the right to life, should not be deprived by anyone even the government. This is a common belief that is supported by many international organizations. For example, Amnesty International thinks that death penalty violates the human rights, and they regard the death penalty as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. In my point of view, criminals commit crimes, but they are still human beings. As humans, they ought to have the basic human rights, in particular the right to life. This vital right is of great importance and must not be controlled by governments. Besides, the right to life is protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by UN in 1948 (Amnesty International, N/A). On the other hand, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Taiwan passed in 2009, also aims to protect people’s human rights and abolish the death penalty (Amnesty International, N/A). These all indicates the worldwide trend towards the protection of human rights, and the global community has called for a gradual ban of the use of death penalty. Taiwan is supposed to be part of it for the reason that death penalty deprives the human rights of the prisoners intensely.
Second, to avoid miscarriage of justice, abolishing death penalty gives criminals a chance to prove their innocence. Since there are no perfect justice systems in the world, the miscarriage of justice is definitely unavoidable and thus leads to wrongful executions that cause irreparable consequences. The wrongful executions of innocent people are found in many places involving Taiwan. There are several reasons why innocent people might be falsely sentenced to death. Some of them confess to the crime under the external pressure from the police and the prosecutor. In other cases, the evidence is not sufficient enough to prove their guilty, but they are still sentenced to death simply because of the color of their skin. For these people, they can be released from the prison and receive compensation from the government, but a wrongful execution can never be back. Therefore, Taiwan has to take miscarriage of justice into consideration and abolish the death penalty in case the wrongful executions would happen again.
One reason that people do not want to abolish the death penalty is that they think keeping criminals wastes a lot of money. Once the death penalty is abolished, it is highly possible that the alternative will be changed to life imprisonment without parole, which means that prisoners should stay forever in the jail. Thus, many people would say that they don’t want to feed those criminals with their money. They think using money from the government and the taxpayers to sustain the lives of criminals is a huge waste, so they oppose it strongly. However, it is totally wrong because criminals actually work in the prison to earn money by themselves rather than by the society. Moreover, 25% of their income will be given to the victims as a compensation based on Law of Execution in Prison in Taiwan (Get Law Service Network, N/A), which is truly effective in helping and benefiting victims. As a result, if the death penalty can be abolished in Taiwan, we not only don’t need to spend money feeding criminals but also compensate the victims through the labor rewards.
To conclude, death penalty should be abolished in Taiwan for these reasons: it is a violation of human rights particularly the right to life, an irreparable consequence while miscarriage of justice occurred, and an effective way to compensate the victims. While people in Taiwan tend to allow death penalty, supporters of abolishing death penalty strive to spread their opinions to the public and try to persuade the citizens and the government with heart and soul. In my opinion, I think death penalty is not a proper and effective way to punish the prisoners, and it has lots of drawbacks that I illustrated above. For a better future in Taiwan, I hope that one day the public opinion will change and the law will be revised to abolish the death penalty.
References
Amnesty International. (N/A). Death Penalty. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/
Get Law Service Network. (N/A). 監獄作業勞作金之分配。取自