Authored CAPF Paper II worked counter-argument on whether the death penalty deters serious crime, using the state-concede-turn-conclude structure
Authored practice. Original worked example for this wiki, not a verbatim previous-year question. It follows the four-part structure taught in developing counter arguments: state the claim fairly, concede the grain of truth, turn with reasons strongest first, and conclude with a qualified position. Draft your own response before reading the model.
"Capital punishment must be retained and used widely, because the fear of death is the only thing that deters the worst criminals."
It is true that the protection of society from the gravest crimes is a serious duty of the state, and that the public anger after a heinous offence reflects a genuine demand for justice that no responsible system can ignore. To the extent the statement insists that the worst crimes deserve the gravest response, it speaks to a real moral intuition, and Indian law itself retains the death penalty for the rarest of rare cases, as the Supreme Court held in Bachan Singh in 1980. To that extent the claim has force.
However, the argument that the fear of death is the only or the surest deterrent does not hold up well on examination. The weight of evidence across many countries does not show that the death penalty deters serious crime more effectively than long imprisonment; what deters the potential offender is far more the certainty of being caught and convicted than the severity of the eventual punishment, and a criminal who believes he will escape detection is undeterred by any penalty, however harsh. Moreover, the death penalty is irreversible, and no justice system is free of error; a wrongful conviction that ends in execution can never be corrected, which is a grave argument against using it widely rather than rarely. What is more, the claim that it is the "only" deterrent ignores the larger truth that crime is reduced chiefly by effective policing, swift and fair trials, and addressing the social conditions that breed crime, none of which a scaffold supplies.
On balance, the better view is not to use capital punishment widely but to retain it, if at all, only for the rarest cases and to rely for deterrence on the certainty rather than the mere severity of punishment. The real question is not whether the worst criminals deserve the worst penalty, on which reasonable people may differ, but how a society actually reduces serious crime, and the honest answer points to detection, prosecution and prevention far more than to the gallows.