Why get rid of death penalty?

[poseidon]

In many countries where there death penalty still exists, they no longer cut off heads nor hang nor garrotte except in the interior of prisons. Finally, in many countries, the death penalty is abolished; For more than a hundred years the blood of the decapitated no longer dirties the soil of Tuscany, and Switzerland is one of the nations which has had the honor of burning the scaffold. And now Switzerland would have the affront to restablish it? It truly has taken very little care of its glory! Before it reestablishes the death penalty, let us prove that the countries where there are the fewest crimes are those where the penalty is the most terrible.

[poseidon]

And, it's precisely the contrary which happens because blood calls blood, it's around scaffolds and in prisons that murderers and thieves are formed. Our courts are schools of crime. What beings more base than all those whom public condemnation uses for suppression: stool-pigeons and overseers, hangmen and policemen! So the death denalty is useless. But is it just?
No, it is not just. When an individual avenges himself in solitude, he can consider his adversary as responsible, but society, taken in its whole, must understand the tie of solidarity that ties it with all its members, virtuous or criminal, and recognize that in each crime it also has its part.
Has it taken care of the childhood of the criminal? Has it given to him a complete education? Has it made easier for him the ways of life? Has it always given to him good examples? Has it seen to it that the criminal definitely has all the chances of staying honest or of becoming it again after a first fall? And if Society doesn't do that, can't the criminal charge it with injustice?

[poseidon]

The economist , Stuart Mill, this honest learned man who says it is good to give as example to all his associates, compares all the members of Society with runners to which any Caesar would fix the same goal. One of the rivals is young, agile, refreshed; the other is already old; there are , among them, the sick, the unstable, people deprived of making use of their legs. Would it be just to condemn the last: some to poverty, others to slavery or death, while the first would be crowned victorious ? And does one do otherwise in Society? Some people have chances of happiness, education and strength: they are declared virtuous; the others are condemned by the rest to continue to wallow in poverty or in vice: Is it on them that social condemnation must fall ?