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Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/Perhaps if it were possible to believe that capital punishment might serve as an effective deterrent it could be argued that the deaths of a few criminals would serve the greater good by preventing many more deaths, both of potential victims and of their potential murderers. But there is statistical evidence to show that the harshest penalties are the best deterrents. The strict laws of most European countries prior to the nineteenth century did not mean that the gallows were seldom needed. And today, in America, where the death penalty is regularly meted out in semi-public conditions, death rows round the country are full to overflowing. Crime results from a combination of various factors including desperation, deprivation or genetic disposition. To believe that executing a certain number of offenders who have been caught will seriously affect the reasoning of potential murderers is a simplistic response to a complex problem. At the bottom, it is no more than the lust for revenge.