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The execution, by hanging out, of Yakub Memon for his part at the 2003 Mumbai bombings invites us to revisit the vexed issue of capital punishment. The world's religious communities are divided on the death penalty. Even with a seemingly monogamous dedication to non-violence in both Buddhism and Hinduism, scholars within these traditions continue to debate with the permissibility of lethal punishment.

While Islam is considered as compatible with the death penalty, the Qur'an's emphasis on forgiveness suggests that Muslims should sometimes respond to evil with prey, not retaliation. As many European countries advocate an inheritance of rehabilitation in their own criminal justice systems, many jurisdictions in the USA stand firmly in favor of capital punishment for serious crimes.

Even a national jury in Massachusetts, a liberal bastion, lately doled out the death penalty to the sole surviving perpetrator of the Boston marathon bombing. Even though the United Kingdom abandoned the death penalty in 1964 - the year of the last executions - almost half of the British public favours a reintroduction of the it. We won't make progress in the public discussion about the death penalty unless we realise that it's only one element in a bigger controversy: about the point of punishment itself. As The Conversation invites us to rethink the death penalty during the next few months, we must not conduct this discussion in a vacuum.

Before you ask yourself whether we ought to have the death penalty, then consider: Why hand away any punishments? Considering the 3 families in the philosophy of punishment can assist us organise our conversation. Why do they deserve it? Maybe because it's not fair for the lifestyles of wrongdoers to go when the lives of the innocent have gone badly - misuse levels the playing field. Whatever the reason, "Retributivists" - people that believe in retribution - assert that the punishment of offenders is mutually beneficial; it's beneficial in and of itself, rather than valuable because of its great consequences.

Retributivists think that the seriousness of punishment should match the intensity of the crime. If you are a retributivist, you might support the death penalty because you think that all or certain murderers deserve to suffer death for their crimes. Depending on the way you think about passing you might oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it's disproportionately harsh - perhaps you think that no matter what someone has done, she does not deserve to die to this. On the other hand you might oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it's disproportionately light. A lot of folks who opposed the current passing sentence for the Boston bomber did so on the grounds that existence in a prison would be a worse punishment - and more fitting - compared to passing.

Risks of punishment realign those demands by making it irrational for self-interested people to break the law. If you are a guardian of deterrence, you must answer two questions about capital punishment before determining where you stand. Does the threat of the death penalty dissuade people from committing heinous crimes to a greater extent compared to the threat of life imprisonment? If the death penalty deterred crime than life imprisonment, this doesn't necessarily indicate it could be justified. Deterrence theorists tend to shield some limit on the harshness of punishment - and it could possibly be that death goes beyond what the government is permitted to threaten. The basic idea is that punishment ought to make the wrongdoer know what he or she has done wrong and inspire her to repent and reform. Whatever version of this view one supports, its implication for the death penalty is reasonably clear.

Far better, to my mind, to plant one's flag obviously and answer the question: which perspective should have priority in our thinking about punishment?.

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