The death penalty still holds its weight in the public, but how long will this grizzly punishment avoid redundancy?
Forfeiting life as punishment has echoed through the ages, ancient civilisations and modern alike have acted on a desire for vindication. From murder and war crimes, to theft and drug offences, the timeline of criminal justice has often seemed to show a penchant for being unforgiving.
Despite our past, it seems the worlds taste for capital punishment is starting to bitter. But does this reflect our emotional and pragmatic decisions on what should be done with our most intense offenders?
Last week Sri Lanka ended its moratorium of the death penalty by announcing that two people are to be hanged, the first in forty three years. Despite courts continuing to hand down the death sentence throughout this time, the gallows have been collecting dust since 1976.
President Sirsena claimed the resuming of state hanging was in aid of the nation’s efforts to combat the drugs trade.
However Sri Lanka’s move to hang the condemned is relatively uncommon in comparison with the attitudes of the international community.
According to Amnesty International the number of people killed by judicial executions, in 2018, had dropped by 31% since the previous year. The Amnesty International Global Report On Death Sentences And Executions 2018, also reported that some international leaders in executions, such as Iran and Iraq, have also decreased their use of the practice.
However, despite the fall in the capital punishment overseas, where does this leave Britain?
Britain ditched the death penalty in 1965 a year after the hanging of convicted murderers Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen. In the 54 years that passed since abolition, public opinion has remained high in favour of this ultimate punishment. Only recently has the tide of perception begun turning.
According to the NetCan British Social Attitudes Report 2017, British public opinion shows 48% in favour of the death penalty, falling under 50% for the first time ever.
While the gradual shift in support is optimistic and interesting, 48% still remains a high number. It is not supposed those in favour want to see people having hands cut off for stealing livestock or buried neck-deep waiting for high-tide, but what does our taste for retribution consists of?
Crimes against children and terrorism are often two matters that invigorate public outrage, The News Of The World published the details of convicted child sex offenders in its Name And Shame campaign in 2000, leading to lynch mob style hunts for those with their details published, targeting, among others, a paediatrician. The mob vandalising her home due to a vocabulary mistake. a light outcome compared with a confusion the other way around.
The opinions for or against are perceived to camp on each side of the political identity border. For the death penalty on the right wing, against on the left. As published in a YouGov poll on what people wanted to happen after Brexit, 53% of leave voters and 54% of UKIP voters wanted a return to the death penalty.
Support is not just reserved for the right and centre-right,1/5 of remain voters wanted a return to capital punishment with 28% of labour supporters swaying in the same direction. Though a pattern can be seen, in terms of voter-ship, diving into the trap of identity politics may still be a mistake.
These murky waters aren’t just confined to the realms of public populism, the political arena often lacks clarity on this issue. The home secretary Saajid Javid has been criticised for not expressing a need for assurance that the US would not execute two captured British ISIS fighters if deported back to The States.
Previous UKIP leader, Paul Nuttall, expressed his support for the death penalty despite clarifying it not being official UKIP policy. He would not be the first mainstream political figure, heavily in the public eye, to express a similar view in the last 10 years.
The UK is not unique in its changing attitudes towards how justice is carried out in the criminal justice system. Along with a decreasing number of executions and death sentences comes an increasing number of nations beginning to turn their back on the hangman, the firing squad and the lethal injection.
Often through moratoriums, countries such as Burkina Faso, Malaysia and Gambia are some of the latest to follow this trend.
Though shrouded in state secrecy, China is alleged to be the worlds leader in executions with the state putting to death over 1000 people in 2017. The US falls around the middle of the table.
A US Gallop poll indicates that favour for the death penalty in The States has fallen gradually over the last 20 years or so. The number in favour still hovers over half at 56%, but dropping by 23% in the last 30 years. Over half the states in USA still practice the death penalty including 4 states, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon, which have imposed a moratorium.
According to the Death Penalty Information Centre, Abolitionist states generally tend to suffer less violent crime. With this in mind, can it be possible for the eye-for-an-eye model to run in conjunction with its image of an effective deterrent?
For myself this is where the paths separate into parallels. The question of punishment should not be boiled down to whether people deserve to live or die, what we think of who should live or die is irrelevant.
The paramount target and result of a criminal justice system should ultimately be whether it can create a society that has learned from the crimes committed by its convicted, and create a safer environment for those in the present and the future.
It is correct, the death penalty does prevent the guilty from re offending, but it does not stop others from offending. restorative justice for small crimes and first time offenders has shown a dramatic decrease in the likelihood of that person further committing crime.
Our approach to punishment should boil down to two main areas, does it amount to justice? And does it help to reduce crime and the number of those who fall victim to crime? The issue seems to be that one cannot always be reconciled with the other. Disregarding humanitarian arguments and the role of the state in killing for the time being, if a crime such as murder is punished by death but this death shows no further utility, there is no argument in favour apart from an emotional drive for vengeance.
Perhaps with support for the death penalty gradually decreasing, Britain will move with the tides of progress and further navigate its way through a fair justice system of empathy yet pragmatism. Though we, the public, gradually lose our taste for the hangman’s noose, it’s important not to lose our heads, or anyone else’s for that matter, and hope the trend continues to crawl forward.
BUM 