Suvam Kishore, LL.M., CNLU, Patna
ABSTRACT
Crime rates throughout the world are on the rise in the modern era. There has been an uptick in violent crime overall, including more homicides, kidnappings, rapes, terrorist attacks, and reports of child abuse. The total crime rate in India is 44.43 in 2022, per the World Population Review. Legislation and punishments designed to discourage criminal behaviour are urgently required in this case. In order to maintain order in society, compulsion in the form of punishment is used. To ensure that society remains orderly, the state must provide punishment to those who break the law. In the past, the severity of the punishment for such offences was totally at the discretion of the monarch of the state, as there was no set rule or system governing them. The development of contemporary notions of punishment coincided with the voluntary transfer of rights and the authority to enforce law and order from the individual to the state. There is a wide spectrum of penalties, from temporary detention and community service to the ultimate consequences of death or life in prison. The death penalty, or "capital punishment," is now the harshest form of punishment in the United States. . In common parlance, the "death penalty" and "capital punishment" are used interchangeably, despite the fact that a conviction does not always lead to an individual's execution (even if the conviction is upheld on appeal). The term "capital punishment" is synonymous with the worst possible sentence. It is the punishment for the worst possible crimes against humanity. The death sentence has always been the outcome of these crimes, despite the fact that the nature and severity of these crimes vary greatly among countries, states, and eras. In the fields of law, criminology, and penology, the term "capital sentence" is synonymous with "death sentence."
The death penalty has been in use for quite some time. Hardly no country in the world has ever utilised the death sentence. Dr. Subhash C. Bhowmik claims that the seven occasions in human history when capital penalty was abolished prove nothing.1 Despite Plato's argument that capital punishment should only be saved for the truly bad, it was often used in ancient Greece under the regulations of Draco (about 7th century BCE), which included the death penalty for murder, treason, arson, and rape. It was employed by the Romans for a wide range of offences, including those for which people were temporarily pardoned during the republic.
