Capital Punishment Surveying two thoughts.

This poster was printed and put up in Srishti School of Art, Design and Tech (Bangalore) and Jindal Global Law School (Haryana) to provoke responses. The point of this was initially just see how far the debate would go among the youth in our generation. I personally sympathize with the Abolitionists point of view (Anti-capital punishment)

The responses that came from the Law students were all adhering to the same point. Both Legal and Humanitarian comments were pushed forward by them, making an inexcusably strong argument against the use of capital punishment. The students were obviously well versed in the subject and had a lot to say about it. One student quoted J. Bhagwati "The only deterrent to a crime was the certainty of getting caught"

The responses I got from Srishti, however, were something to be reckoned with. On an average, 70% of the responses were in favour of the use of capital punishment, and in particular to the case mentioned in the poster. around 15% were against the death penalty, and the remaining either didn't know who Kasab was, didn't care, or thought that the topic was too 'disturbing' to talk about.

This shone light on a lot of other things I hadn't really taken into account. out of the Pro-capital punishment comments, some interesting points came up; why should the state spend tax payer's hard earned money on someone who obviously has no respect for human life, by keeping them in prison? And almost half of the rest of the Pro-Death penalty crowd spoke of rather misinformed, radical alternatives, such as implementing torture as a tool of punishment or having a monarchist society where all prisoners had to be killed regardless of the crime committed.