Opinion:

Should we re-introduce the noose?

By Lionel WIJESIRI

It was in the news recently that the Government is considering the re-implementation of capital punishment due to the alarming increase in incidents of grave crime. Previous governments in 1999 and 2001 also decided to re-implement execution by hanging for murder and drug trafficking, but for some reason or other, they failed to proceed.

The last execution of a criminal in Sri Lanka was in June 1976.The contemporary debate over capital punishment involves a number of important arguments based on either moral principles or social welfare considerations. The primary social welfare issue, viewed as the most important single consideration for both sides in the death penalty controversy, is whether capital punishment deters capital crimes.

Psychologists and criminologists studied the death penalty initially and reported no deterrent effect. Economists joined the debate later, and reported a significant deterrent effect. Many global organisations, such as Amnesty International, regard the abolition of the death penalty as a fundamental purpose.

Retribution

Supporters of the death penalty argue that the death penalty is morally justified when applied in murder cases, especially with aggravating elements such as multiple homicide, child murder, torture murder and mass killings such as terrorism or genocide. Some even argue that not applying the death penalty in latter cases is unjust.

Take for example, Robert Blecker, an internationally known advocate of the retribution death penalty; he has alienated both sides of the debate on the morally complex issue of capital punishment. However, his position as designated outcast is nothing new, nor is his strongly held conviction that the most vicious and callous offenders deserve to die and that society is morally obliged to execute those “worst of the worst” criminals.

However, abolitionists argue that retribution is simply revenge and cannot be condoned. Others, while accepting retribution as an element of criminal justice, nonetheless argue that life without parole is a sufficient substitute. Abolitionists also believe that capital punishment is the worst violation of human rights, because the right to life is the most important, and judicial execution violates it without necessity and inflicts to the condemned psychological torture.

A powerful argument for reserving capital punishment for murders is related to what is called marginal deterrence in crime and punishment literature. Econometric evidence, mainly using recorded crime statistics, lends considerable support to the view that crimes are deterred by increases in the likelihood of being caught, and the severity of the punishment. These studies indicate that the deterrent effect of certainty of punishment is stronger than the deterrent effect of its severity.

Of course, we should be worried about the risk of executing innocent persons for murders committed by others. In any policy toward crime, including capital punishment, one has to compare errors of wrongful conviction with errors of failing to convict guilty persons. Any support for capital punishment would weaken greatly if the rate of killing innocent persons was as large as that claimed by many.

However, it is believed that the appeal process offers enormous protection not so much against wrongful conviction as against wrongful execution, so that there are very few, if any, documented cases of development of DNA identification. However, lengthy appeals delay the execution of guilty murderers, and that can only lower the deterrent effect of capital punishment.

Final comments

European governments are adamantly opposed to capital punishment, and some Europeans consider the American use of this punishment to be barbaric. Europeans have generally been “soft” on most crimes during the past half-century. For a long time they could be smug because their crime rates were well below American rates. However, during the past 20 years, European crime has increased sharply while American rates have fallen - in part because American apprehension and conviction rates have increased considerably.

Now, some European countries have higher per capita property crime rates than the United States does, although violent crimes are still more common in America. At the same time America was reducing crime significantly, in part by greater use of punishments, many European intellectuals continued to argue that not just capital wrongful execution (and this process has been strengthened enormously with the development of punishments), but punishments in general, do not deter crime.

In essence, the capital punishment debate comes down to a debate over deterrence. I can understand that some people are sceptical about the evidence, although I believe they are wrong both on the evidence and on the common sense of the issue. It is very disturbing to take someone’s life, even a murderer’s life, but sometimes highly unpleasant actions are necessary to deter even worse behaviour that takes the lives of innocent victims.

The death penalty, emotional beliefs notwithstanding, cannot be described as a deterrent per se. It has been found that the existence, abolition, or re-introduction of capital punishment has no discernible effect on the murder rate. What does have a discernible effect, on the murder rate, on other crimes of violence, and on the crime rate in general, are various social factors.

Every percentage rise in unemployment, for example, is accompanied by a corresponding rise in mental illness, suicide, and crimes such as wife beating, child abuse, robbery and murder. This is not to say that being unemployed or poor directly causes people to become criminals. Most unemployed people are no more likely to commit a crime than their employed counterparts. However, it is to say that being unemployed with little hope of getting a job puts a serious strain on people. Most cope with the strains of poverty and unemployment in ways that do not bring them to the attention of the police, but inevitably some do not. And inevitably, as the number of the poor and the unemployed increases, so does the prison population. Society, it seems, can’t afford the small amounts required to help people become decently self-sustaining, but can afford to spend the far greater amounts required to keep people in jail.

Harsh conditions

Those in prison for a long time are given plenty of encouragement in their choice of a criminal path by prison conditions which are designed to humiliate and frustrate rather than rehabilitate. Even so, there are those who demand that prisons be even harsher than they are at present. Their conviction is that penitentiaries aren’t bleak enough, aren’t brutal enough, don’t do enough to degrade inmates. They prescribe jails that would be even more efficient in producing hardened and bitter criminals.

The rest of us, unless we are prepared to execute or imprison for life everyone ever convicted of any offence, may question the wisdom of this course of action. Who do we want to eventually release back on to our streets? A man who during his time in prison was treated fairly and humanely and given a chance to make a new beginning? Or a man who comes out bitter and angry, wanting to take revenge for the way he was treated, convinced by his experience in jail that all of society, including the State which put him away, operates on the basis of brutality, vengeance and hypocrisy?

As any parent knows, we teach much more by what we do than by what we say. No matter how piously we justify brutal prison conditions or capital punishment, the message we give is simple: violence and force are a normal and legitimate way of dealing with problems. Violence solves problems. We may be sure that inevitably this is the message that will get across.

The crimes of some murderers are almost beyond comprehension. It is hard to believe that a human being could sink to such depths, but at least the rest of us can put them aside as sick aberrations. They are so far removed from us that some of the horror is taken away. What is more horrifying, in a sense, is the picture of a society organising itself to kill. Deciding that killing people is a way to solve problems, and setting up the machinery to do so. This kind of killing is the most horrifying of all. Especially when alternatives are available, and we refuse to take them.