The death penalty should never be used... apart from the potential of innocents being convicted and killed, prison is there for two reasons, punishment and rehabilitation... society has now realised that people often commit crimes because of reasons other than because they're arseholes, in prison the theory is that you can punish the prisoner for the crime(s) commited, and rehab them to prevent repeat offending.
Now obviously this doesn't always work, but in fairness you don't hear about the times when it does, only the times when it doesn't.
Also, since prisoners are convicted by the laws standing at the time, who is to say that in 10-15 years the ones who you sentenced to death might be found to have broken no laws at all... I don't mean child molesting or murder etc, but for instance say the BNP get in with a sizable majority (not likely) and made being Muslim a capital offence... at least if you imprison them it is reversible... otherwise you could end up with genocide on a scale not seen since a certain german fella killed a few million jewish people.
And yes, I do know I just Godwinned myself!
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