Hoi!!
Ik heb m'n mondeling gehouden over capital punishment (=de doodstraf). Ik had zo'n betoogje opgezet en die zet ik hieronder wel ff neer ok?? Misschien dat je er wat aan hebt.
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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
I'm going to tell you something about my opinion about capital punishment.
I am against this kind of punishment, because I think that nobody has the right to kill somebody else unpunished. Or, like it is embedded (= vast gelegd)in the human rights, 'Everybody has the right to live' and I think with capital punishment you violate (= schendt) this right. I think nobody may take this right away from you, even not the law!
When, for example, a criminal kills his victim, and after that the law court decides to give him the death penalty, you are doing actually exact the same thing. Then you measure by two standards. Why would the first murder be a crime and the second not?
I think you can better give the criminal an imprisonment for life.
Because I think that if you takes someons' freedom away, you give him the biggest punishment that exist.
I will give an example to make it clear. Try to imagine that a man with the age of 35 (so that is pretty young) has killed another man in revenge or something. The man has a very nice household; a wife and two young kids. Then they round him up and he has to appear for the law court who gives him the death penalty. Okay, that is offcourse very terrible for him and his family, but I think it is much more terrible when he has to go to prison for a lifetime. Because then he know that he will never leave it. That he will never coming back, that he will never be able to go on holidays with his kids or to going out with friends. Then he knows that he will never see how his own kids will grow up. With other words, than you are taking away his freedom and I think that is the most terrible thing that can happen to you in life. Another thing is that the man will feel guilty for the rest of his life. Maybe not opposite to the man he killed, but certainly opposite to his own family. Their life must be horrible now he is in prison. So with this punishment he can learn from his faults, and I thought that that was also the meaning of punishment; you have to learn from your faults. And that off course, is not possible when you are dead.
A American jailer has ever said "Why do we kill people to tell people that killing people is wrong?" I absolutly agree with him. It sounds ridicules that you kill people to show the rest of the society the killing people is wrong. Off course there are many people who say that it has a good influence on the society because when you kill the criminal, nobody can be troubling by him anymore. Okay, that is true, but I think that if you give someone an imprisonment for life without a punishment reduction it has the same effect. The capital punishment is much too definitive.
Sometimes it happens that people conclude by hindsight that they have sentenced the wrong person. Okay, that is always terrible to discover, but if the person in question has had the death penalty, is that réally very sad.
I know that there are also some people for capital punsihment, but I think their arguments are stupid. For example, there are very much people who are for capital punsihment and they give as reason that capital punishment a good way is to take revenge. And that it would take away the sorrow of the relations of the victim. But I think that is nonsense.
I can imagine that the family of the victim wish the offender death, but I don't think that it would really works. Maybe that the thought, that the offender also death is, will help for one month or two, but it won't take away the loss of their relative, or their friend or whatever! And besides, after practise capital punishment there are two different families who have sorrow.
So I am very glad that the Netherlands and many other countries the capital punishment has abolished. But I also think it is sad that still many countries, especially in Afric and Asia, still use the capital punishment. I hope they will soon abolish it.
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