Is capital punishment road we wish to take?

Maybe it’s the fear of our own mortality that makes us believe that someone with the innate ability to commit such an atrocious act will one day target us personally, or maybe it’s our attachment to other individuals that necessitates emotions of sentimentality and sympathy for each life that is taken “prematurely.” But how do we then separate ourselves as a society to those murderers if the punishment we bestow is the very same act which we have condemned them of? To paraphrase many great pacifists and freedom fighters of the past, the problem with an eye for an eye is eventually it will leave the whole world blind.

While it is quite natural to expect that justice be served in these cases, the truth is that the state of our national security infrastructure prevents capital punishment from having any effect on the escalating crime sweeping our country.

I am pretty sure that those people in prison either awaiting or serving their sentence aren’t the ones on the street murdering innocent civilians. So what assistance can capital punishment provide if the criminals are not being apprehended or prosecuted? Even the much touted State executions of the Dole Chadee gang at the end of the last century didn’t impact the crime rate as much as the measures that were enforced by the Basdeo Panday-led administration, which registered a decrease in the murder rate a full three years prior to the hangings.

The ability to execute people for their crimes is precluded by the Government’s inability to arrest and successfully prosecute those who perpetrate the crime, thereby rendering this entire argument moot. However, should we ever be faced with the possibility, is this really the road we wish to take? We are already aware that crime is a byproduct of the social failings of our society, so are we really willing to condemn someone to death for falling victim to their circumstances? Especially when a non-lethal alternative of incarceration is not only available but viable? Because an imprisoned inmate is no more likely to commit murders than a dead one.

The real questions are how willing are we to reciprocate the taking of a life with the same, and how does that make us different from those whom we have so righteously condemned? Ravi Maharaj via email