Utilitarianism: Capital Punishment and Happiness Essay

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Utilitarianism supports Capital Punishment directly due to many claims. Capital punishment is a complete necessity in civilizations for a variety of reasons. Capital punishment is the death penalty for a prisoner in which an individual is sentenced and then killed due to the governments choice. The philosophical view of utilitarianism helps explain as to why this punishment is a complete necessity in society.
A Utilitarian approach to this subject completely supports capital punishment because it must evaluate whether or not the happiness of all parties is maxed out. Applying Utilitarianism belief, the happiness of the public is at a very high level due to a prisoner dying. After a crime is committed by the criminal, the person doesn't necessarily give regard to the happiness of society, the criminal actually made it so that they could make the populations happiness as low as possible, by committing a crime that requires for them to be sentenced to death. Since utilitarianism is based on the publics happiness, without a high amount of happiness society is therefore ruined. A criminal only looks out to help himself, they don't look out to help maximize the happiness of society. Thus a criminal who gets executed is no longer a part of that community in which he is toxic towards maximizing the happiness of everyone. The family of the victim of the criminal will not be able to completely get on with their lives if a criminal like the person is still living and breathing, their happiness is also minimized if the criminal stays alive. But if the criminal is put to death, the family is given a sense of security as well as the general public, thus their happiness is once again maximized.
An inmate can do many things to try and shorten their own sentence, and loopholes can be found for them to be able to exit the jail. If that happens happiness is not maximized by the general public. Capital punishment can help reduce crimes by lowering the chance of would-be criminals to commit crimes. A person that wants to commit a crime might not commit the actual crime because he knows that he'll be punished for it, because of this the would-be criminal will not do the crime and simply continue on his own path. The Utilitarian approach can be used because once a criminal is killed, they are permanently taken off from society, the
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