Dear Editor,
When I saw the caption ‘Death penalty “spectacular failure” in crime fight’ (SN, August 18), I had a good laugh and decided to read the article later. The death penalty is a complex subject and this response deals only with the article as such.
It appears that Dr Arif Bulkan does not understand when he speaks about a penalty being a deterrent. He does not quote any statistics except the result of one study carried out in T&T.
Now the good doctor would know the extreme danger of drawing sweeping conclusions affecting the whole world including Guyana based on one study. What the article signally fails to tell us is how many people per year were executed and their type of crime.
I find it a travesty of judgement that the effectiveness of the death penalty should be assessed when no executions have been carried out over a long period of time. Are we to believe that potential murderers would be deterred from murder because of some ineffective statute on the books and the United Nations is there hovering in the background as rescuer of the last resort?
Murderers must understand that if they choose to take life, then their life is also on the line. Potential murderers must see that people who did what he/she is contemplating are very likely to result in the almost immediate end of their own life.
Is it too much to go to the next stage and say that the lack of a death penalty, or as in the case of Guyana, lack of its implementation, is an incentive to murder?
Dr Bulkan does not say how many people were executed in the last ten or more years, yet he proceeds to a conclusion that the death penalty is a dismal failure. The Government of Guyana has effectively emascu-lated the death penalty by refusing or failing to implement it. But we cannot describe a system as a failure when we have not tried it properly. I say to the government to start carrying out the executions of death row people. They should not spread it out too long.
Let the message get out there that if you murder your wife or anybody else you will shortly wind up as dead as she is. And then let us see the rate of murders.
The argument that the death penalty is barbaric is nonsensical. Barbarism lies in providing an environment where barbaric acts can be carried out.
Ask all those dead wives/partners. They will tell you that they were done to death in a most humane manner, and that their killers should be invited to correctional seminars where they will be suitably re-oriented and give remorseful speeches. After this they can be dispatched on lecture tours, etc.
There used to be old concepts like the punishment must fit the crime, that the criminal must supply compensation in some way. I pose this question: What is an appropriate punishment for people who rape then murder a seven-year-old girl? This matter continues to hurt the stomach while we wait for the government to implement its stated policy and while the true barbarians continue to take life casually.
The article reports that the T&T study found that murders in T&T are on the increase, but conviction rates are falling. Conviction rates have to do with the efficiency of the law enforcement and the legal system; they have nothing to do with the death penalty acting as a deterrent. In sum, it makes no sense to assess the death penalty as a failure where no executions are being carried out.
The debate will continue as more and more of the helpless and innocent are consigned to early graves and seminars and presentations continue to deal learnedly with the matter.
Yours faithfully,
Mujtaba Ahmad Nasir
