I think that providing we do see a significant improvement in the efficiency of the police force and the judicial system with regards to catching, trying, and convicting more offenders than of late, there is essentially no reason not to re introduce the hanging laws. How often have we heard in recent years that a person is considered by the police to have been "involved in" or "wanted in connection with" multiple murders?
As long as the enforcement process regains a semblance of efficiency, hanging certainly does reduce the number of repeat offences by the same murderer.
So called "crimes of passion", i.e. murders in the heat of the moment, will likely continue apace. They are almost a tradition in some circumstances, unfortunately, as in marital situations.
But thoughtless, careless murders, say in the execution of a robbery, may indeed be reduced if criminals realise they now, for the first time in a long, long while, actually face the possibility of being caught and executed.
Sure some completely unintelligent and brutal thugs will still kill, 'cos they find it easier than wearing a mask to prevent identification, but it's a step in the right direction.
Read the column: Commentary: To hang or not to hang?
Let us not get too carried away with what many hold up as a reason not to have capital punishment, the potential for innocent people to be executed. Unfortunate as it may be when that happens. Tragic for the innocent person and their families.
But let's just get real. It is undeniably the case that governments accept the deaths of innocents, in their hundreds, their thousands, or depending on the circumstances in their millions, as a cold fact. Just accounting.
When a country such as the U.S. increased speed limits on major highways from 55 mph to 65 mph, it was freely accepted, though not openly discussed, that there would be an increase in road deaths and injuries.
This was simply a fact of life - what the Americans and others refer to in other circumstances as "a cost of doing business". Analyzed by actuarial calculations, and offset, (along with increased medical costs for the injured), against the commercial, benefits of having trucks and other vehicles getting to their destinations faster and therefore less expensively to industry.
Similarly, from border disputes to full blown wars, it is an accepted fact in administrations that its soldiers are going to be killed, year in, year out. It's a cost of "doing business" from a governmental perspective.
And whilst it will be "unfortunate" if and when innocents pay with their lives through the failure of judicial and law enforcement systems of a country, the question asked, (behind closed doors, of course), is not whether it is "fair", or "acceptable", but (if the administration is truly professional and efficient), whether the process that arrested and tried and found the deceased guilty, used due process to get to that execution.
They cannot, as a government, hold off from doing what is considered necessary and right for the majority, just because now and then an innocent will die. If they did, there would be no armies, for example.
That killing of "innocents", to a greater or lesser degree, happens 500 times per year in T&T, right now. It's just that the murderers are not caught and executed for it.
And collectively we have to a great extent become accepting of it, individually, because we've been told often enough that most of the killings are "gang related". So we tend not to care much. We need in this context, as in many others in life, to decide collectively as well as individually, what we want.
Then we need to be prepared to pay the price.
John A Lindsay | London
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