My attention was drawn this week to the 2008 report on capital punishment produced by Amnesty International.
For your reading pleasure I present the ‘Execution Top 10′ showing number of known executions in each country and the methods used.
- China 1,718 (shooting, lethal injection)
- Iran 346 (hanging, shooting, stoning)
- Saudi Arabia 102 (beheading)
- USA 37 (lethal injection, electrocution)
- Pakistan 36 (hanging)
- Iraq 34 (hanging)
- Viet Nam 19 (shooting)
- Afghanistan 17 (shooting)
- North Korea 15 (hanging, shooting)
- Japan 15 (hanging)
The figures, apart from those for USA and Japan, are minimum numbers as the governments in these 8 countries are secretive about the use of the death penalty. Japan and the USA publish their figures, presumably as a clear sign that they are civilised and don’t need to hide behind secrecy.
In addition to the above, another 15 countries executed people, making a total of at least 2,390 executions in 2008.
I must admit that I’m pleasantly surprised that the number is so low – I was expecting it to be much higher.
That’s about as far as my pleasant reaction goes.
Apart from Belarus, Europe is free from the death penalty. Countries in Europe may do some pretty unpleasant things, but cold bloodedly killing people convicted of crime is not one of them. As I grew up in Europe, I fully accept that I could be conditioned to be appalled at state executions. If I’d grown up in Asia or Texas, maybe I might feel quite OK with it.
But I didn’t and I don’t and I find the whole concept sickening. I just want to press ‘publish’ and be done with it.
Just take a look at the countries on the list – I find it very revealing.
China paving the way into economic super power status! USA sandwiched between Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iraq.
Am I the only one who sees the sheer craziness, barbarity and hypocrisy of state sponsored murder?
Please tell me I’m not going mad.
How do you react to this?
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Hi Ian,
As an American, I can honestly tell you that I am totally against the death penalty. I find it crazy that people who claim to be pro-life also claim to be pro-death penalty.
One of my uncles died due to a bomb that hit a cafe that he was in and never once did it occur to anyone in my family to seek the death penalty. We figured that life (God or karma) would even out the score. Yes, his killer was arrested and punished but no one in my family sought the death penalty.
I know we live in dangerous times but you don’t fight terror by acting like a terrorist yourself. So I am with you on the sheer stupidity and madness of the death penalty and other state sponsored murder.
I agree. I do understand the impulse to react to violence with violence. But I think it is just that – an impulse. It’s about retribution, fear and destruction.
Hi Ian
I’m not sure how to comment.
South African abolished the death penalty some time ago. There are frequently cries to have it reinstated.
We are living in a country where crime is horrific and rising all of the time.
We have people leaving in drones and the country deteriorates. I, personally, am very, very sad about the state that South Africa has been falling into over the last years.
Anyway, I digress.
Many people leave when they have experienced some sort of violent crime. Everybody knows someone who has been murdered or raped or shot etc.
There is absolutely no respect for life.
Most criminals, if caught, don’t seem to end up in jail for all that long and every now and then, the government decides to pardon a whole bunch of them and they are back on the streets. The prisons are overloaded.
I don’t know if the death penalty is a deterrent. I don’t think that many people were ever even executed…
I would just like crime to stop. I would like things to be as they were when I was a child and we left doors open without thought. Now I live behind a two meter wall and security fence but still wouldn’t leave a door unlocked. Oh, I could go on…
The criminals are more free than us.
Juliet
Juliet. Well you managed to comment pretty well, after all!
Sounds like the justice and prison system isn’t serving you at all well against the rising violence. I think criminal violence is part of a whole system.
At the front end I want to feel safe and I want support from the judicial and police systems for my protection. Most penal systems in the world are based on retributive justice which means that criminals pay for their acts. The problem is they don’t work very effectively. Locking people up or killing them as punishment doesn’t work, as you describe. They are either back on the streets before it’s safe for us, or it relies on punishment which is just as disconnected from our humanity as the crime. I want people who wish me harm to be physically restrained until they no longer wish me harm. Mistreating them will not accelerate that. Being nice to them is also not the answer.
There must be some path in the middle where they are forced to come face to face with the results of their actions and at the same time given the chance to reform and change.
Now that takes time and money.
I see people who turn to crime as part of a bigger system. If my neighbour kills, rapes or steals then I am part of the problem. I turned a blind eye. I failed to offer support. I didn’t care. I am not an innocent bystander in my community. None of us are.
I read about a tribe, I think in South America. When one of the tribe commits a crime they take collective responsibility. They call a tribe gathering and one by one they tell the ‘criminal’ in what ways that person is valuable to the community. They assume that if someone commits a crime it is because they’ve become disconnected from their place in society. And it’s society’s job to reconnect them.
I’m not saying it’s easy. Just the problem is bigger than the individual ‘criminals’ doing terrible things.
My own country used to implement the death penalty about a decade ago. Since then it has been abolished. Was it a deterrent then? One can never say because it was implemented by a flawed justice system. Most of those convicts who had the lethal injection were poor. I do not ever recall a rich and influential criminal facing the death penalty, yet many of them were qualified.
I used to go for the death penalty, but seeing how its implementation can be compromised I have had my doubts. And I still have doubts about the current justice system – rich and well-connected convicts get privileges while in prison. One even bragged he’s enjoying more privileges in prison than when he was on the outside.
I don’t see the death penalty as a deterrent. Do those countries using it suffer from less violent crime than those that abolished it? I don’t think so.
Most justice systems in the world are enmeshed with the people in power. I find it highly unlikely that any justice system in the world actually works. If it did, then there would be no crime. It is aimed at dealing with the results of crime and not the causes. It will always fail when that’s it’s mission.
Ian,
No matter how you look at it, this IS cold blooded murder. It shows that these states as a whole have yet to learn the true value of human life. The belief that some people don’t deserve to live is simply barbaric.
You and I see eye to eye on this, Michael. As on many things!
How do I react to it? I shrug my shoulders. At first I think, “I’m glad my country (Canada) didn’t show up unexpectedly on the list”. Then I react by thinking some selfish thoughts of how I have no bearing on what happens to those who met that demise. Then I react by thinking all I can really do is send light to those lives treated with disregard. Then I react by knowing the most important thing I can do is continue to ‘be’ a light in this world, doing my best, one thought at a time, to lift humanity. And remain hopeful.
I like your approach, Suze. Step by step.
When I was younger I was EXTREMELY anti-death penalty. Then I read “Stranger in a Strange Land” and it completely challenged (many of) my ideas.
Heinlein refers to the act of killing someone as ‘taking them out of the game for unnecessary roughness’. The concept being that we are all beings here to “play” on earth. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.)
And while that seems like a plausible, even reasonable idea, I have never been comfortable with the track record of any justice system. So while I might theoretically be ok with capital punishment, I am practically opposed to it.
The problem with that approach is a referee needs to decide who is being unnecessarily rough and take them out of the game.
Who takes the referee out for their unnecessary roughness? And where are the impartial, fair and universally respected referees?
Maybe to a certain extent the violence may be like a sign for people to get a reality check. But for others it may be terrifying and living life in fear.
Then again living fear is normal and conquering is the path we all need to take.
But in a bigger picture, look around, violence on movies, television, etc. yet violence is bad and stuff.
I think this is really retarded because the media pretty much dictates what we should be doing and thinking.
Fear is always part of violence, either as part of the cause or as part of the result. And yes I agree, the media has a huge hold on our ideas about what to do and what to think. But who gave them that power? They didn’t take it by force!
Well the US is in some interesting company there. I have always been against the death penalty. It is too eye for eye for my taste. How do you teach that killing is wrong, if you kill? It’s like trying to teach a child not to hit by spanking him …
And there is the problem here of it being most used with the poor and African Americans. And what if the person is innocent?
But there is the problem of what to do with the worst of the worst … it bothers me that so much is spent on incarceration when good people who need assistance are going without. And our prison system doesn’t rehabilitate – it just teaches how to be a better criminal. We’re having a lot of trouble with the city budget here in Philadelphia and a lot of needed programs are being cut. We fought to keep out all our libraries open and summer programs for kids going but what I noticed in the budget that nothing was being cut from the juvenile detention and prison budgets. What they don’t get is that if they get rid of libraries, rec centers, and city swimming pools, the budget for prison and detention will ultimately have to be increased.
On an unrelated note – have you considered installing the Subscribe to Comments plugin?
I’m not an expert on prison systems, though do know a few people who specialise in reform in that area. My non-expert opinion is that you are spot on when you say they don’t rehabilitate. That’s the problem with a justice system based on punishment for crime rather than a justice system that actually tries to tackle the causes (at the individual and societal levels). And the camps seem to be polarised with the right saying ‘hang ‘em all’ and the left saying ‘be nice to them’ (I exaggerate for dramatic effect!). I think I covered this already in a previous comment, so I’ll it at that for the moment.
And thanks for the tip on the plug-in. I’ve installed it now and hope it’s working!
The world of the book is solipsistic – so basically there are no multitudes; simply one being. A being who, in this example, is both referee AND player and is taking itself out of the game. (It makes sense in context of the book.) I found it an interesting theoretical theological experiment.