Bellue

Must Go Nuts? Nuts Must Go

To my kind readers: Comrades, please read the whole statement before making a judgment. Never draw conclusions too soon, for impatience brings regret. Awareness cannot be attained if one has no commitment to seek it.

As of 2008, fifteen states, including District of Columbia, have no death penalty. The remaining 35 states, excluding the US territories, have different laws regarding the extent of the crime on which capital punishment is the answer. Despite the slight differences, we all acknowledge that these states with death penalty use capital punishment for crimes such as murder, treason, and for some states, rape. That these states would love to seek alternatives to death penalty if they could at all costs, we acknowledge as well.

After doing an extensive research, I, as a strong advocate of abolishing death penalty, have concluded that yes we can abolish death penalty without increasing crime rates. Yes we can find alternatives that will deter future criminal activities. These potential alternatives will prove to be very effective, even the most conservative states will ultimately agree to end capital punishment since these states, I strongly believe, currently use death penalty only for the best interest of their citizens’ safety and would not mind improving their justice system, once again, for the best interest of their citizens. In fact, right now, I would like to make a suggestion that everybody might want to consider.

After thorough research on the cause of crimes such as murder, I have concluded that the best way to eliminate the cause is to eliminate the “source” by castration, defined as any action such as surgical or chemical process involving the males' losing the functions of the testes, which secretes hormones such as testosterone.

Comrades, let us face the truth: capital punishment does not deter crime. Many states and countries use logic to claim that capital punishment deters crime; however, studies prove otherwise.

According to Jakarta Post, “countries with capital punishment do not have lower levels of serious crime…in fact when these countries reinstated the death penalty, an increase in the rate of serious crime has resulted.” Another example occurred in Oklahoma. After capital punishment was reinstated in 1990, “an abrupt and lasting increase in the level of stranger homicides”. Critics may argue that using an isolated example - in other words, using only one state - doesn’t prove anything and that it could have been a coincidence since the reason for such increasing crime rate remains unknown and they are right. However, according to Amnesty International USA, “the murder rate in non-Death Penalty states has remained consistently lower than the rate in States with the Death Penalty.” By “remained” they mean from 1990 through 2006. Only after accepting this truth would the remaining thirty-five states be able to consider the alternatives that the other fifteen states and most of the European countries use.

Once again, I propose this new alternative: castration.

Comrades, please understand that I as an advocate of abolishing the death penalty believe that putting inmates on death row does not solve anything. Once again, as proven by researches and Amnesty International USA, capital punishment does not deter crime. Therefore, instead of “removing the stain,” we should “rid the source of the stain.” Now that we know this, let us take a look at my painful yet memorable experience.

One sunny afternoon, while I was playing with my neighbor’s dog, I spotted a four-inch-tall ant mound. To get rid of it, I had two choices: spray the aerosol or give harmful baits. I chose the former and the results were very effective since the worker ants that climbed out of the mound died and the mound was damaged; however, within a week, the remaining worker ants repaired the mound and it has upgraded from four-inches to six-inches height. Seeing that aerosol does not work, I have borrowed harmful baits from my neighbor, fed the ants, and waited to see what happens. As predicted, within a fortnight, the worker ants took the bait, fed it to the queen, the queen died of food poisoning, the ants died, the colony fell, the mound decomposed. The lesson? Removing the source is more effective than removing the stain. Same concept can be applied to how we could reform our justice system.

From this experience, we would see the stain as the ant mound. We could correlate that to the convicted murderers, traitors, or rapists. We would correlate spraying aerosol on ant mounds to “remove the stain” to imposing death penalty on these convicted criminals. Once again, this doesn’t end the problem, for the source remains untouched. On the contrary, if we use the harmful bait to kill the Queen, we are getting rid of the source. [The Queen’s job is to lay eggs. Therefore, ending her life stops posterity of her colony and everything falls apart.] This produces great results in a long run and is what we are looking for as an alternative to capital punishment. Castration is the key to ridding the source.

Studies have shown that the source or the “urge” that causes crime is hormones, primarily testosterones. One of the studies involved an even number of 18- to 22-year-old men as subjects. Half of these men were given dolls. The other half were given pellet guns that mimicked a Desert Eagle automatic handgun. Before the experiment began, all subjects’ saliva samples were collected for testosterone testing. Fifteen minutes later, each of the fifteen men was given a cup of water and told that he may add however many drops hot sauce to the water after being told that the cup of water was to be given to the man sitting next to him. After the experiment, saliva samples were collected again to see the change in the testosterone level. Results show that men who handled the pellet gun have put more drops of hot sauce in the water than men who handled the toy have. Results also show that “testosterone went up about 100 times more in the men who handled the gun than in the men who handled the doll.” The higher the testosterone level, the higher the aggression.. One may suggest that we get rid of guns all together to end murder since exposure to guns caused the rise in testosterone level. However, guns don’t kill people; people do. Besides, it is unconstitutional to deny the right to bear arms. We already have policies as to what one must do in order to obtain a license. We must fix the loopholes of those policies to avoid letting these firearms fall into the wrong hands.

Having explained why the death penalty doesn’t deter crime and how the cleansing of the source is the key, I must say that the reason behind my proposal is quite obvious. There have been reports showing that castration psychologically changes the mood of the sterile man, resulting in a calmer perspective on life. Also, sex-offenders who have gone through the treatment are less likely to repeat the same crime. A German researcher A. Langelüddeke has found that only 2% of the treated sex-offenders are likely to repeat the same crime within the next twenty years, whereas 80% of the untreated sex-offenders are likely to repeat the same crime. Whatever the crime is, rape or murder, high testosterone level is to blame. We must rid the source as a punishment to 1) decrease the likelihood of re-offense and 2) truly deter crimes.

I must clarify that in reality, although I do want to see the death penalty abolished altogether, I do not advocate castration. However, I do wish to find alternatives to death penalty. Think about it. Why must we use it when it doesn’t deter crime? Have we forgotten the original purpose of using the capital punishment - to keep our citizens safe? We must keep that purpose in mind and seek alternatives. To improve the justice system, we must take small steps. There are many western European countries, such as France, that maintain relatively low crime rates without using the death penalty. Of course, it would be difficult for USA as a country to accomplish what France accomplished. Therefore, individual states should follow the procedures that non-death penalty European countries use since it’s not unconstitutional for states to abolish death penalty. In America, we follow a federal system where powers are divided between the central and the state government. The constitution allows individual states to decide upon local issues. Therefore, the remaining 35 states should use that power to abolish death penalty. Comrades, may this baby step finally protect the best interests of our people’s safety one day.