Posted: February 14th, 2023

Death Penalty

Analyze whether the United States is following the crime control or the due process orientations for the death penalty
Death Penalty
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Death Penalty
In America, attitudes toward the death penalty are usually the symptom of a cluster that is more of a social or political attitude. The due process model and the crime control model are models characterized in the justice process. The crime control model involves situations in which cases are processed with the need to primarily protect the public. Here, the police are usually charged with enforcing the law to maintain public safety and keep criminals from spiraling out of control (Hayes & Lynn, 2020). The emphasis is placed on processing cases efficiently in ways that resources are maximized. That is done still when recognizing that budgetary constraints that limit long, drawn-out processes.
The due process model usually emphasizes the protection of defendants’ rights and is driven by respect for the formal law structure. The model emphasizes that every successive stage is normally designed to present impediments that are formidable to proceeding further with the accused in the process. Generally, crime control considers the justice process as an assembly line, while due process considers it an obstacle course. Capital punishment that involves the death penalty is legal in twenty-eight states in the United States (Garrett, Jakubow & Desai, 2017). According to the Death Penalty Information Center, people executed numbering to twenty-two in the United States only in 2019. The ones that were imposed were thirty-four.
The Civil Liberties Union of America believes that the death penalty violates the constitutional ban against unusual and cruel punishment. It also guarantees due process of law as well as equal protection assigned under that law. The current trends show great support for capital punishment. The death penalty was reinstated in Kansas and New York while no state abolished it. The constitution states that any death penal penalty case and law must meet the rights stated in the constitutional standards (Braga, Weisburd & Turchan, 2018). The Eighth Amendment does not allow cruel and unusual punishments. The fifth and fourteenth amendments require due process of law since the fourteenth amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws while the sixth amendment promises fair trial to defendants.
That means any defendant has the right to appeal a death sentence on these grounds or others that best suit. Courts of appeal scrutinize cases of the death penalty in ensuring constitutional standards and procedures are followed properly. The death penalty is under the orientation process of crime control. The widespread opinion that the death penalty deters crime is the death penalty (Braga, Weisburd & Turchan, 2018). There are statistics given by countries that have abolished the death penalty show that the absence of the death penalty doesn’t increase the crime rates. For example, the death penalty was abolished in Georgia in November 1997. There were no serious crimes observed, which led to a decline in targeted killings.
The people who plan crimes usually are deterred by the likelihood that they will be convicted or be caught instead of the severity of the punishment. The threat of severest punishment is not an obstacle for confident people. In general, the main deterrence is not the severity of that punishment but the probability that the crime’s culprits will be identified, arrested, and convicted. That means that the efforts of crime prevention are aimed to improve the efficiency of law enforcement. With the demand for tougher penalties and maintaining the death penalty to deter crime, law enforcement agencies are used in distracting the public’s attention from performing prevention and investigation of crimes. That is necessary to secure citizens and develop the legal community.

References
Edmunds, C. E., Milton, F., & Wills, A. J. (2018). Due Process in Dual Process: Model‐ Recovery Simulations of Decision‐Bound Strategy Analysis in Category Learning. Cognitive science, 42, 833-860.
Hayes, A., & Lynn, T. (2020). Due Process vs. Crime Control Models of Justice.
Braga, A. A., Weisburd, D., & Turchan, B. (2018). Focused deterrence strategies and crime control: An updated systematic review and meta‐analysis of the empirical evidence. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(1), 205-250.
Garrett, B. L., Jakubow, A., & Desai, A. (2017). The American death penalty decline. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 107(4), 561-642.