Terror's Child

Capital Punishment

Few subjects can raise such debate, but what are the arguments? Is it murder, pure revenge, or justice? Does it alleviate problems or create them?

The debate hinges on three questions: Is it a deterrent to crime? Is it cruel or unnecessary? Is it right for the state to take the life of an individual? These three questions and the champions of their conflicting perspectives will probably keep this subject always on the boil.However it’s more than just a question of whose argument is best, what's black and what's white.

Currently their is a violent crime victimisation rate of approximately 1000 per 100,000 persons in Australia. As can be expected with such excessive violent crime has come a rise in public emotion and outrage, and as these acts get ever closer to home, so too fear claims more of peoples lives. And this, while proving a great boon for the security industry, is only tightening an already too tight coil of public furore; one that will have its release unless eased.

So there is deep emotion, but there is also the pragmatic expedient angle. The prisons are full, the crime rates increasing and the funding to keep it all workable ever harder to find; and we the taxpayer remain the providers.  The daily adult imprisonment rate averages approximately 150 per 100,000 persons in Australia. That's in excess of 30 000 people that have to be contained, guarded, fed and clothed per year. With a conservative estimate of $100k per prisoner, that equates to $2b annually.

Maybe the deciding factor will of necessity finally come down to practicality, whatever that may be; the bottom line that society cannot afford to keep going the way it is. The question remains then: what is the best thing to be done ethically, practically and of necessity with violent criminals. Historically, the European settlement of Australia resulted from that very question.

Australia was founded, in part, by those that escaped capital punishment­—something reserved for the habitual offender. Transported by convict ship to serve their life sentences down-under, these 'law breakers' became the forbears of white Australia. Thomas Barrett is believed to have been the first convict executed in Australia. Charged with stealing, he was tried, condemned and hanged all on the same day, 27 February 1788. Not until the 19th century did opponents to this form of punishment arise. By the 20th century all states and territories had restricted or replaced its use, Qld being the first in 1922, followed by NSW (1955), Tas (1968), NT & ACT (1973), Vic (1975), SA (1976), and WA (1984). The last execution being Ronald Ryan in the late 1960s.

Apart from a few statutes that still retain execution for treason and piracy, the abolitionists have so far won their case, but this may prove to be a throne hard to retain if history does indeed repeat itself. And on that there's no debate.

Is it a deterent to crime? Is it cruel or unnecessary? Is it right for the state to take the life of an individual?

What are your thoughts?