The hanging debate

The horrendous killing spree and intense feeling of insecurity in TT have jolted us again into the debate that is as old as the very idea of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth of the Old Testament.

We have become emotional about the savagery and the preying upon women, the gang warfare and the unbelievable uselessness of the police in solving major crimes.

I think it would be fair to say that the only reason why the police do a good job at raking in revenue from drivers — although I am not sure for whom or which department exactly — is that they are assisted by the purely commercial and often over-eager interest of the car-wrecking firms. I state this with little fear of opposition since we all know just how abysmally low the detection rate is for all crimes.

In desperation, people cling to the belief that the threat of hanging might help to stem the growing lawlessness. But logic suggests that cannot be so, since to proceed to trial and secure a conviction requires the police to catch a criminal first, and then put together a watertight case that will stick.

We have too little proof that they can do that, or that our justice system — which is creaking so badly that it promises to implode — could manage increased efficiency from the police. It seems, therefore, that we are clutching at straws.

The criminals no more fear being hanged than killing a person, and it is disingenuous therefore for the politicians to try to convince us otherwise.

There are many reasons why capital punishment needs to be considered carefully and not be a purely emotional reaction. Chief among them is its efficacy as a deterrent. The death penalty cannot be a deterrent if 20 years after abolishing the death penalty, Canada saw a 44 per cent drop in murders. Something it is doing is working, and I do not think it is just its policing or brilliant legal system.

Canada is a very equitable society, which ours is not, nor is the USA which has among the highest rates of legal killings and also the highest rates of serious crime and murder. It is not controversial to assert that a lot of crime is linked to deprivation of all sorts.

Lawyers would argue that proportionality has always been a moral principle of punishment; that the crime and the punishment must fit, that it is not barbaric therefore to deprive someone of their life. We might argue back that the right to life is a very basic human right and that too many people have died in terrible miscarriages of justice.

One study suggests that in the USA, one in 25, or four percent of people sentenced to death are innocent of the crime. Some are exonerated but many more never get freed. Where is the justice in that? If a one percent chance exists that an innocent person could be hanged then that is too high a risk.

I cannot imagine suffering the fate of facing the death penalty knowing the verdict is wrong.

We have all experienced personal outrage when unfairly judged in everyday life, and we know that error is common.

There is the law and there is justice. Consider the effect of the State sanctioning an act of killing on the national psyche. I am told that the Dole Chadee hanging spree left a deep gloom over this l a n d .

Capital punishment is not the quick fix for our complex p r o b - lems.