Should Death Penalty Be Allowed in Our Country?

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       It’s long been a controversial issue if a country should allow death

penalty or not. Opponents may think that death penalty violates human

rights and that one’s live couldn’t be deprived by anyone. On the other

hand, supporters think that death penalty can act as a punishment to the

criminal as well as a deterrent to potential suspects. There’s no standard

answer to this question. However, being part of the society, we should

consider this issue seriously. Though execution violates human rights, we should retain capital punishment because it’s more important to maintain social order and secure people’s safety. There are several reasons why death penalty should be allowed in our country.
       First of all, death penalty can deter criminals. For most people, they might think of the outcomes before they take any action. Hou Youyi (2010), the former director-general of National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior, said that death punishment acts as the last warning to the suspects, or the number of the violent crimes might keep rising. Thus, death penalty can scare off them, and prevent them from committing serious crimes. However, there are exceptions. For people overwhelmed by emotions, or desire to die, they might not consider the outcomes and death sentence wouldn’t be a threat to them. Though there are exceptions, death penalty still works to the majority.
       Second, the execution of the criminal allows them to pay a price in an “an eye for an eye” way. Take Weng Renxian (翁仁賢)’s case for example. He deliberately set fire and killed six of his family on the Chinese New Year eve, 2016. His family who survived the fire disaster requested the jury to sentence Weng to death. Take another case for example. In 2016, Wang Jingyu (王景玉) randomly killed a 3-year-old girl, whose mother also calls for the killer’s execution. People who commit heinous crimes and show no possibility of correction should be sentenced to death to meet the victim and their family’s expectations.
       Though death penalty tries to reach justice, there are still some unjust

cases, which undermine people’s trust toward the government. Take

Chiang Kuoching (江國慶) for example. He was a soldier, being accused of

raping and murdering a little girl. He was tortured and then confessed his

crimes. He was executed a year later, in 1997. Since this case remained

doubtful, after 16 years, the Military Court finally restarted the investigation

and then Chiang was proved to be innocent. Sadly, the execution couldn’t

be undone. This trial boiled public anger and people asked for abolishment of death penalty to avoid unjust cases. This case is a tragedy without a doubt, however, abolishing the death penalty alone couldn’t solve the problem fundamentally. The solution to reduce the number of unjust cases is to conduct more in-depth investigations before giving an adjudication to prevent any misjudgment and unreversed tragedy.
     To sum up, to allow death penalty or not is a complex issue in our society. Though our country is following the international trend to protect human rights, people in Taiwan still call for the execution of criminals when serious criminal cases happened. People believe that death penalty still works because it can intimidate potential criminals, and force criminals to pay a price for what they had done.  According to the survey conducted by National Development Council in 2016, up to 88% people agreed that we should retain capital punishment. Considering the public opinions and the positive effects of death penalty, we should keep this punishment in our society in the near future at least.