This is one of the very few political issues which I see as black-and-white. About which I will never seek compromise or to meet people with other views half-way, and here’s why…
If you do not have the death penalty the only debate (on punishment, protecting the public and rehabilitation) is where, under what conditions and for how long.
If we allow the death penalty in any circumstances, then we are forced to draw a line. Which crimes should be punishable by death, and which not.
On a very long continuum from not paying a fine or shoplifting at one end; to rape, murder and mass murder at the other; parliament, government, or the judiciary would need to draw that line somewhere.
It is not difficult to imagine how that would play-out in reality. There would be a kind of Overton window covering which crimes, and which perpetrators, should be killed. Some on the side of the death penalty would call for it for what we might call more minor crimes.
After any particularly heinous crime, calls for death as punishment would go up and the window would shift. It would be ever-shifting with the public mood, which can be extremely fickle.
Those of us who will always oppose the death penalty would be forced to argue about where the line should be. Rather than saying never, we would be forced to ‘defend’ those who have committed the very worst crimes and concede that in some circumstances it is justified. We would be forever arguing against moving the line too far towards less serious offences.
We have probably all heard about miscarriages of justice, where innocent people have been convicted. That’s one good argument against.
We may also be aware of the relatively lenient sentences given to men who kill their partners, as opposed to women who kill their (often abusive) partners.
There are also different perspectives on punishment for the same crime. A man who rapes and kills a ‘random, innocent, young, white and attractive’ woman in a knife attack, if it was left to public opinion, would get a very severe sentence.
Another man who kills a drug-using, prostituted, black woman in an illegal brothel in a ‘rough sex gone wrong, accident’, might not be convicted at all, and even if convicted would likely receive a more lenient sentence, under the system as it stands.
Reform of the criminal justice system is needed and urgent, if we are to solve the problems I have highlighted above. Not forgetting the many other issues, including massive underfunding of the court system at all levels.
Reintroducing the death penalty is, in my view, exactly the wrong way to achieve this.
If we do want to reduce questions of life and death to money, which I don’t, I read once that, in America, life in prison is also the cheaper option.
The lengthy and expensive appeals and processes of moving someone from a sentence of death to actually carrying it out costs, on average, double that of life imprisonment. So I remember, I might need to look that up. Or someone reading this might know and cite the source in the comments.
Can you imagine the ‘culture war’ debates which would dominate so much of British politics if we were to try to draw the line on when we should use the death penalty?
Below the line, prison or other sentences, above the line, death?
And a grey area around the line. Who decides in those cases?
I don’t want to get into that debate myself, and I don’t believe our country should.
So for me, on using the death penalty, in any circumstances, it’s a flat no.
Hi Dave, happy new year!
I agree with you and I observe that your two examples of rape and murder are not hypothetical. Thank you for making that point.
I take your view a step further and apply it to armed conflict.
War is sanctioned murder.
The casulties of modern warfare are mostly civilian, of these the most severely affected are women and children.
Humans are innately violent and history demonstrates that we will kill to defend our territory/tribe.
I'm not sure that there is much difference between killing in war and capital punishment for certain crimes. I'm also not sure that we have the capacity to change- but I don't believe that's a reason to stop trying.