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Explain your topic and state the specific question that you are addressing.
Presentation of an Argument (approximately 400 words)
Describe the scholarly source on one side of the issue.
Present what you see as the main argument from that source (present the argument in standard form, with the premises listed above the conclusion).
Evaluation of the quality of the reasoning in this source (approximately 200 words) You may address questions such as the following:
How adequately does the article support the premises of the argument?
How strongly do the premises of the argument support the truth of the conclusion?
What (if any) missing premises would be needed to complete the argument (make it valid/strong)? Are these missing premises justified or merely assumptions?
My topic is the debate over whether or not the death penalty should be abolished in the United States. Specifically, I am addressing the argument that the death penalty should not be abolished because it serves to deter crime and protect society from violent criminals.
One source of scholarly research on this issue is a study conducted by Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Joanna M. Shepherd published in The International Review of Law & Economics (2004). Their primary argument is that “the evidence suggests that capital punishment has a deterrent effect” (Dezhbakhsh & Shepherd, 2004). To support their claim, they present four main premises: 1) there is an increasing trend of states executing those convicted of murder; 2) those states with higher executions have lower rates of homicide than those with fewer executions; 3) this relationship exists despite differences in state income levels and other factors; and 4) even when controlling for these other factors, states with higher execution rates still had significantly lower homicide rates.
The authors adequately support their premises by providing empirical data which clearly demonstrates that higher execution rates correlate with lower homicide rates across different states. Additionally, they address potential confounding variables such as levels of income inequality, drug use prevalence, poverty rate etc., making sure to control for them when examining correlations between execution rate and homicide rate. Overall, their premise based argument appears to be well supported by their evidence. However, due to limitations inherent in conducting studies involving complex societal systems such as criminal justice law enforcement/punishment systems further research would need to be done before drawing more concrete conclusions about whether or not deterrence effects exist from executions specifically rather than from some larger social factor like general tough-on-crime policies being enacted throughout many US jurisdictions at various points during certain periods examined within this study . In order for this argument’s conclusion regarding deterrence effects induced by capital punishment to gain greater strength additional unexamined variables such as public opinion polling data would need to be included in future studies designed to investigate similar questions related to capital punishment policies’ effectiveness at deterring crime in general terms