Bring back capital punishment? Photo credit: Fangleman, http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinkemmerer/3778758043/
The last execution in the UK – by hanging, no less –took place in 1964; capital punishment was abolished in 1969 and was formally stricken from all the books in 1998, after the adoption of the Human Rights Act. But some Britons are looking to reinstate the death penalty and they’re using the government’s recently launched e-petition scheme to make their voices heard.
Is the e-petition scheme just a voice for the mad?
The question is, however, how many people in Britain actually want to see the death penalty brought back? And how many people just enjoy talking about it?
The fight to bring back capital punishment is in part being led by blogger Paul Staines, better known to the British media and political establishment as thorn-in-the-side Guido Fawkes. Specifically, Staines’s petition, “Restore Capital Punishment”, asks that the Ministry of Justice “map out the necessary legislative steps which will be required to restore the death penalty for the murder of children and police officers when killed in the line of duty”. More than 5,600 people have so far signed on this particular petition and there are others supporting a similar sentiment; it’s a ways off from the 100,000 required for the issue to see debate in Parliament, but lawmakers have said that they can’t ignore the groundswell of interest in a debate.
Staine’s claims that most people are in favour of bringing back the death penalty, however, more than 10,000 have signed on to another petition, “Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment”. A September 2010 YouGov poll found that 51 percent of respondents did indeed wish to see a return of the death penalty, down from around 70 percent in the 1970s; other YouGov polls indicate that most people only support the death penalty for murder in certain context, such as the murder of a child, the BBC reported.
So while some commentators are debating the validity of the e-petition format, others are revisiting the death penalty issue for the first time in a decade.
Paul Staines debates the death penalty:
- Yes and no from The Sun. In a rare effort to present balance, The Sun contacted two parents of murdered children with differing opinions on the subject of capital punishment. Linda Bowman, mother of Sally Anne, who was killed at 18, said that she thought the death penalty would help families like hers “move on”, explaining, “Lots of families who’ve suffered the murder of a loved one go out into the community, give talks and do some really good work, but at the end of the day the death penalty is the only deterrent that is going to work.” Her daughter’s murderer may get parole at the age of 70 and, she says, he’s never shown any remorse for his crime – what if he decides to kill again?
But Barry Mizen, father of Jimmy, who was murdered at 16, says that capital punishment is “unequivocally wrong”: “No punishment will ever make up for the loss of my child. Neither capital punishment nor a life term in prison will undo the terrible pain. The loss is permanent and will never be overcome. I understand people want justice, but sometimes they really mean revenge.”
- What’s the point of this debate?The death penalty is one of those issues that never go away, that “fester away beneath the surface of public life and every now and then burst through like boils,” said columnist Alexander Chancellor at The Guardian’s Comment is Free. And now that it has once again, politicians should nip it in the bud because this little exercise in rule by petition isn’t going to go anywhere: “If the restoration of the death penalty goes to parliament for debate and is then rejected by it (as it is bound to be), will people feel they have got ‘more power’ or will they feel even more let down by their politicians? Instead of responding to the expenses scandal with phoney displays of humility, thereby raising false hopes of people power, MPs should just go straight for a bit and then, over time, re-establish their dignity as the people’s independent elected representatives.”
Studies show that the death penalty actually does deter crime, at least in the US.
- But the death penalty works.Tim Stanley, research fellow in American History at Royal Holloway College, claimed in the blog posting for The Daily Telegraph that actually, the most recent studies from America, where the death penalty is alive and well, shows that the death penalty actually works there. “From 2001 to 2007, 12 academic studies were carried out in the US that examined the impact of the death penalty on local crime rates. They explored the hypothesis that as the potential cost of an action increases, so people are deterred from doing it. Nine out of twelve of the studies concluded that the death penalty saves lives.” Stanly also claimed that the rate of violent crime in the UK, “with its human rights legislation and touchy-feely approach to child murderers”, is actually higher than in the US: “The US seems to be getting something right: executing cold-blooded killers might be part of it.”
