As we discussed at the beginning, punishment is a necessary thing. We need and depend on it in our society to hold people accountable for their actions and to act as a way to teach others and deter them from committing similar crimes. By delving even further into the concept of punishment and studying what is necessary for it to be effective, we found that capital punishment does indeed meet the four criteria set out by Thiroux. Next, views on punishment from three different ethical perspectives were closely examined. It was found that in retributivist, utilitarian and restitutionary conceptions of punishment, capital punishment could not only be defended but also adopted. Having established that the death penalty is an exceptional form of punishment, we examined three specific arguments: deterrence, economic cost and justice. First of all, the purpose of capital punishment is to deter the criminal from further action by putting him to death, and to deter the public from committing crimes by directly showing them what the consequences of their actions are. Although some argue that deterrence rates are low, this is not a fault of capital punishment but rather that the public cannot see these executions and that they do not occur often enough. Second, it makes