Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Arson’

shouldn’t conservatives be cheering for lowering the number of death row inmates?

November 23rd, 2011 12 comments

instead of cheering high numbers.
why do conservatives consider Texas’s record amount on death row inmates as a win?
they beat every state at the record amount of murderers. that’s a pathetic lose you people are proud of. whichever state has the record amount of abortions certainly isn’t getting any cheers from the left. that’s a tragedy. that’s why we want to provide social programs. so people wont have to resort to murder and thief just to make it to the end of their life.

My opinion has nothing to do with conservative v. liberal arguments. It is based on the death penalty system in action:

For the worst crimes, life without parole is better, for many reasons. I’m against the death penalty not because of sympathy for criminals but because it isn’t effective in reducing crime, prolongs the anguish of families of murder victims, costs a whole lot more than life in prison, and, worst of all, risks executions of innocent people.

The worst thing about it. Errors:
The system can make tragic mistakes. In 2004, the state of Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for starting the fire that killed his children. The Texas Forensic Science Commission found that the arson testimony that led to his conviction was based on flawed science. As of today, 138 wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated. DNA is rarely available in homicides, often irrelevant (as in Willingham’s case) and can’t guarantee we won’t execute innocent people. Capital juries are dominated by people who favor the death penalty and are more likely to vote to convict.

Keeping killers off the streets for good:
Life without parole, on the books in most states, also prevents reoffending. It means what it says, and spending the rest of your life locked up, knowing you’ll never be free, is no picnic. Two big advantages:
-an innocent person serving life can be released from prison
-life without parole costs less than the death penalty

Costs, a surprise to many people:
Study after study has found that the death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison. Since the stakes are so high, the process is far more complex than for any other kind of criminal case. The largest costs come at the pre-trial and trial stages. These apply whether or not the defendant is convicted, let alone sentenced to death.

Crime reduction (deterrence):
The death penalty doesn’t keep us safer. Homicide rates for states that use the death penalty are consistently higher than for those that don’t. The most recent FBI data confirms this. For people without a conscience, fear of being caught is the best deterrent.

Who gets it:
The death penalty isn’t reserved for the worst crimes, but for defendants with the worst lawyers. It doesn’t apply to people with money. Practically everyone sentenced to death had to rely on an overworked public defender. How many people with money have been executed??

Victims:
People assume that families of murder victims want the death penalty imposed. It isn’t necessarily so. Some are against it on moral grounds. But even families who have supported the death penalty in principle have testified to the protracted and unavoidable damage that the death penalty process does to families like theirs and that life without parole is an appropriate alternative.

It comes down to whether we should keep the death penalty for retribution or revenge in spite of its flaws and in spite of the huge toll it exacts on society.

i need help with a really huge essay?

December 19th, 2009 1 comment

i have to write a thousand word essay about the dangers of arson this is what i have so far
There are many dangers associated with arson. Arson can even result in death to you or other people. If you don’t already know arson is a felony and if you get a felony charge it stays on you record till your 30 years old. This can cause a lot of repercussions like if you plan on joining the military then you minus well forget that idea. Another major repercussion is not being able to leave the country a felony restricts you from getting a passport meaning no travel out of the country. One of the biggest dangers of arson is loss of life. No matter what you think you can’t really control fire in a split second the wind can change or some dangerous fumes leak into the ignition radius and boom depending on the chemicals you could cause an explosion with the power of a two hundred pound bomb. There are even dangerous chemical gasses that can be produced when you burn certain object they release chemicals like chlorine gas. Another very large danger of arson is property damage fire can be very destructive and destroy just about anything if exposed to it long enough. Another danger is losing control… for example the recent wild fire in California was a result of arson and the property damage is nearing the billion dollar mark and nearly 900,000 people displaced. The fires are blamed for 14 deaths and charred more than 508,000 acres, destroying about 1,600 homes. This arsonist who also burned over 38,000 acres of land was under the age of ten. He was just a child playing with matches. The ash alone poses an array of health problems do to the alkali contents in the ashes. The ash also poses a major mud slide and flooding threat to the houses remaining in the area. Here are some statistics:

-Arson is the leading cause of fires 267,000 annually in the United States and the second leading cause of deaths 475 and injuries 2000.
-Arson also causes 1.4 billion dollars in property loss each year. 50% of arson fires occur outdoors, 30% in structures, and 20% in ve¬hicles.
-Half of all arson arrests are under the age of 18. Vacant and abandoned buildings are targets for arsonists.
-Also poorer neighborhoods experience fourteen times the number of arsons as higher income neighborhoods.
-Church arsons increased sharply in 1996.
-There were a total of sixty two thousand four hundred and thirteen incidents from the year 2003 to 2006 in Las Vegas Nevada alone.
-Also in that time period three million six hundred seventy eight thousand eight hundred eighty four hundred dollars in damages were racked up from arson fires in Las Vegas.
– According to analysis of 1996–1998 data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System the dollar loss per arson fire was slightly higher than the average of all fires.
-Deaths and injuries were somewhat lower.
-Arson is the third leading cause for fire related deaths and injuries.

Arson isn’t only a danger to the arsonist and innocent bystanders they are a great danger to the fire fighters that are trying to put the fire out. In December 1999 six fire fighters died in a Worcester (MA) abandoned cold storage warehouse building fire. In the years 1997 to 2006 there were 1069 firefighter deaths reported by United States Firefighter Association.
any thing you think i could add i only have 559 word so what should i do what else should i talk about

See if this helps:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4940000/newsid_4944300/4944336.stm