The arguments around the death penalty should have been remembered before the public was given a referendum on leaving the European Union or not. The public’s desire for revenge against Tory austerity, coupled with the emotive language of the Brexit campaigners, saw reason and logic tossed aside in much the same way as many still argue for the return of capital punishment.
Besides, referendums in the UK never go well for those that call them. The result of the referendum to approve joining the Common Market was generally opposed by the Labour Party who called it, just as the majority of the Tory Party wanted to stay in the EU in 2016. Some people say this is what it means to be in a democracy – this is the power of the people and their ‘will’ should be respected. But that’s like being caught in a stampede and blaming the cows for being startled.
There has never been a referendum in the UK to bring the death penalty back because the result would be a foregone conclusion: the British public would vote for it. Driven by our right-wing press, people would flock to the polling booths and tick the ‘yes’ box without a second thought for why we got rid of it in the first place.
In no time at all, a list of potential candidates could appear in various papers and there would be a general clamour to ‘get on with it’. There would be in-depth profiles of the most heinous criminals and a putative timetable for whatever method of execution was deemed the most efficient to begin. Motivated by the boot of the people, the government’s prosecutors would be told to fulfil their will and do their duty.
Defence lawyers, to the great disgust of the majority, would strain their sinews to prevent their clients (however deserving) from reaching the end of a rope, the point of a needle or the firing line. There would be a long and drawn-out process of appeals and counter-appeals as the legal machine, never the most balletic of institutions, argued the merits or demerits of executing particular individuals. After a year, two years, three years, the public would still be waiting for its first ‘victory’. (In the United States, the average waiting time on Death Row is fifteen years.)
The whole affair would be become ruinously expensive and nothing would be achieved. The promise that we would be ‘better off’ if certain kinds of criminal were terminated rather than allowed to enjoy the dubious luxury of living in a cell, all expenses paid, for the rest of their lives, would soon be broken as the legal costs spiralled out-of-control. Worse than that, we would have to listen humanitarians from other countries telling us how vile our system has become.
Even if the justice system did begin executing criminals again, promptly and without delay, there would be the inevitable cock-ups. It’s an unpleasant fact that miscarriages of justice have happened in the past and will happen again and if you hang somebody for a crime they didn’t commit, such as Mahmood Hussein Mattan in 1952 or Derek Bentley in 1953, there’s not a great deal you can do about it. A posthumous pardon might be some comfort to the dead man’s family but it won’t bring them back.
Hanging was abolished in Great Britain in 1965 by a clear majority in parliament. I have no great faith in the parliamentary system, but I believe it was the right decision. On financial grounds alone, it has saved the country millions. On moral grounds, I don’t understand how killing a killer makes us any better. And on the evidence of those that have lost family members and watched their killers die for their crimes, there’s no sense of satisfaction there either. In the end, everyone becomes a victim.
However, the general public, because of its horror at the crimes committed by the likes of the Yorkshire Ripper, Brady and Hindley, or Rose and Fred West, has always been in favour of bringing the gallows back. I’m sure there are a number of terrorists in British prisons who would find themselves on the front pages of the Mail with a ‘should be next’ headline. If Jamie Bulger’s killers had been older, they wouldn’t be alive today (I’m sure there are many people who would call for them to be re-tried and executed even now).
Doubtless, the recent murder of a policeman in Berkshire and the increase in knife crime across our country will spark a new debate. Many people will be persuaded that only the threat of being executed for such crimes will be enough to put an end to them. It would be useless to point out that even with the death penalty, people still knifed, poisoned or beat each other to death.
Capital punishment, however satisfying to the public mind, doesn’t work. In the same way, leaving Europe won’t work either. The legal battles have already been rolling for three years and the Northern Ireland problem seems utterly intractable. The economic problems, so big and so complex we can barely see them (think trees and wood), are pushing the country towards recession. Our reputation in the world has fallen off the scale.
Just as child-murderers and terrorists shouldn’t be ‘saved’ from what’s perceived as a ‘just reward’ for their crimes, so the public sees departing the European Union. It’s simple, they say. Just get on with it and leave. But like hanging, the result will be equally terminal. Instead of being part of the richest and most powerful union in the world, we will be outside it – outside the rules that stop our politicians preying on us, outside the regulations that keep us safe and outside the freedom of movement the rest Europe will continue to enjoy. Even though most of us are innocent, we will be the ones in a cell on Death Row.
And that’s why referendums are always a bad idea.
Comments