Death Penalty

You didn't understand. Just because Canada eliminated the death sentence and the homicide rate went down after the fact doesn't mean those two are related that way. Another factor could be at work.

For example, when ice cream consumption goes up, so do the number of drowning deaths. Do people drown because of ice cream? Highly unlikely. in this case, the intermediate factor is obvious - the time of year and temperature determines people's desire for ice cream and their inclination for swimming. But in more complicated cases as homicide rates, the factors aren't as obvious. The above was just an example of why correlation != causation.

oh if that's the case then I don't know, cause i was taught this last year in gr 11 law class.

But to counter the argument: it might or might not be related, but it's a fact that when capital punishment was removed the criminal rate decreased. and doesn't matter what really cause the decrease, the current system is working fine. There's no point putting the capital punishment back up again, because it is not needed and it "might" cause criminal rate increase. do we really want to test it out?