Who should be hanged?
published:
Tuesday | November 25, 2008
Edward Seaga
I was asked to make a statement on the murder of children at Sunday's Digicel Premier League End of Round final at the National Stadium.
It was to be brief - one minute. In that short presentation, I stated that hanging has not solved the problem of murder and I am not in favour of it.
But the special circumstances that prevail today with the killing of children require special treatment and those who murder children should be hung. This type of murder is the ultimate crime and should be punished with the ultimate penalty - hanging.
If the occasion allowed time for expansion of my statement I would have added that the same treatment should apply to the murder of women, old people and members of the security forces.
'Hanging works'
As for those who commit other murders, we can remove hanging as a verdict but sentence them to life imprisonment without parole. That is as frightening as a punishment as hanging, but it is more humane and allows for wrongly convicted persons to have a chance to put new evidence before the court.
I could offer evidence that 'hanging works' by stating the statistics on murder for the two periods in which the murder rate was low, as set out in the chart above.
These figures (see chart), standing alone are not sufficient to be convincing. There were other factors which related to how persons with criminal intent interpreted the seriousness of the government of the times to carry out hanging as a penalty for murder.
I can speak for the 1980s as there was no doubt about the intent of government in that period. Nor was there any doubt about the firmness of government's intention in the decade after Independence.
The softening of the resolve on hanging emerged in the 1970s and 1990s to the present when there was serious ambivalence during which hanging as a deterrent lost its sting.
In that regard, the long overdue debate on the issue in the legislature will bring certainty where there is uncertainty. But that certainty may not have the same impact today that it had in the post-Independence decade and the 1980s because the incidence of murder now has become a problem which is almost out of control. Much more than hanging will then be needed. But that is for a different debate.
Usurping rights
What does concern me is that the crisis may lead to fundamental human rights being usurped the way George Bush dealt with fundamental rights in the United States after 9/11.
I have been through the bitter experience in the state of emergency of supporters of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) who were workers scheduled to work in the 1976 general election or were active in political and community organisation for the JLP, being detained on no stronger basis than the limited information, often malicious, gathered by the police officer in charge who was given detention orders pre-signed by the minister of national security to fill out with names as he saw fit.
One of the most serious problems to be faced in the battle against crime is that there are different types of justice:
Social justice is what the poor dream of but rarely get;
Natural justice is what the country needs but can't get; and
political justice is what this country does not want but gets.
We spent a lot of time in constitutional reforms over the past 15 years seeking to help to devise and implement a system of justice which would create a just society.
This is of paramount importance to the advancement of the country. A just society should be our ideology, not capitalism or socialism. Among other things, it embodies good education for all and robust growth to ensure that learning can produce earning.
Charter of rights
I initiated the movement a dozen years ago to re-write the chapter on Human Rights in the Constitution. To that end, I submitted to the Constitutional Reform Commission a re-draft of the sections on human rights and freedoms to provide for a Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms which would ensure that no Jamaican would be a second-class citizen of his country.
Where is that fundamental reform now? Set aside by more promises of enactment after 12 years of discussion! I get the feeling that no government wants a Charter of Rights to become an instrument of the Constitution of Jamaica.
It puts too much power where the power really belongs - in the hands of the people.
Edward Seaga is a former prime minister. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at the UWI. Email is: odf@uwimona.edu.jm.
