Most countries around the world have **abolished** the death penalty; meaning they *used* to have it, but have banned it, with bans generally coming into force from the 1970s-1990s. These days even countries which do allow a death penalty rarely use it.
When people discuss the pros and cons of the death penalty today, they generally argue in absolutist terms, e.g.: the risk of executing innocents, that the state shouldn’t kill its own citizens, lifetime incarceration is worse than the release of death etc. But clearly historical societies felt the death penalty *was* appropriate. So what changed in the mid-to-late 20th century to make countries favour abolishment?
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A change in the philosophy of punishment.
In old European and current American ethics, the purpose of punishment after a crime is committed is retribution. The criminal has harmed society, so society harms the criminal in return. That’s why American prisons are bad places where people are sent to be punished.
In modern ethics, it is recognized that harming the criminal does not undo the crime that they have committed. Retribution’s only purpose is to maybe make the victim feel better. But building a legal and criminal system based around protecting people’s feelings is stupid. So the purpose of punishment shifts to 1) protect society by removing the criminal from it and 2) rehabilitate the criminal to fix whatever it was that made them a harm to society so they can eventually be reintroduced.
Even if the criminal cannot be rehabilitated, killing them serves no purpose that permanently imprisoning them does not. The effect is the same, they will never rejoin society and their crimes are not undone. So there’s no purpose in killing them.
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