Capital punishment is an effective deterrentIn 1979, Lawrence Singleton raped and cut off the arms of a 15-year-old girl named Mary Vincent in California. Singleton was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for this crime, but due to California law, he only served eight years of that sentence. When he was released in 1987, there was such an outcry in California that Singleton had to be housed on prison grounds because no community would accept him as a resident. He moved to Florida that year, where his presence was a subject of great controversy. People insulted him and spat on him as he walked the streets. At age 69, just ten years after his release from prison, Singleton stabbed a woman to death and was sentenced to death in the electric chair in Florida (“Crime Magazine”). This story is not unusual; many repeat killers were on parole at the time they committed horrific multiple murders. This is an example of why I think people in society should believe that capital punishment is the only way to deter these killers from striking again. I believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent when applied, used consistently and if the process is less lengthy. Over an eight-year period, from 1968 to 1976, when no executions were taking place in the United States, the number of murders increased at an alarming rate – in fact, it almost doubled (HOOK, 43). In 1972, Texas commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment after the Supreme Court banned the death penalty. A recent study tells us what happened to these inmates when Texas stopped executing them. The study shows that since 1974, approximately three times as many prisoners have been released from death row by commutation, judicial revocation or dismissal as have been executed. After 47 death row inmates were released into the general prison population, 12 of those 47 commuted prisoners were responsible for 21 serious violent offenses against other inmates and prison staff. I think this is a great example of what can happen when these criminals are placed in the general prison population. Another commuted death row inmate killed a fellow inmate while in general population, and less than a year after his parole, another commuted death row inmate killed a girl (SOWELL, 106). In all of these cases, I believe that if the death penalty were used consistently and enforced, the victims of these repeat offenders could perhaps still be alive..