No noose is good noose
OUR FREQUENT macabre and brazen murders are causing many citizens to crave the return of capital punishment in Jamaica. We used to hang some convicted murderers, but that came to an indefinite pause when, in November of 1993, the Privy Council ruled that convicted murderers, Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan, were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment while awaiting the carrying out of their [mandatory] death sentence.
They were confined in isolation, 23 hours every day, in a six-by-sixfoot cell, with a foam sponge for bedding and a bucket for a toilet. They each spent 14 years on death row under those conditions. Appeals are very time-consuming and take years to be heard. The Privy Council ruled that such treatment was unconstitutional, and that a waiting period of more than five years was cruel and unusual.
Because of that ruling, the last judicial execution in Jamaica was of convicted murderer Nathan Foster, in 1988. The limit on the number of years that someone can be kept on death row prevented many Caribbean nationals from being executed. Worldwide, only a few countries retain the death penalty.
Murderers slaughter with impunity, and are becoming bolder every day, challenging our security forces instead of “... escaping into nearby bushes”. Because of this, an indeterminate number of citizens clamour for the return of hanging to quell our murder rate. However, research has proven that apprehending suspected felons and long custodial sentences are far more effective at deterring crime, especially murder. In jurisdictions where the death penalty has been abolished, the crime and murder rates did not rise. It turns out that the maintaining of capital punishment only serves to give the citizens the impression that something is being done about crime and murders. Of course, killing a killer is mostly vengeance and sends the wrong message to the populace.
One writer eloquently opined: “In civilised society, we reject the principle of literally doing to criminals what they do to their victims: The penalty for rape cannot be rape, or for arson, the burning down of the arsonist’s house. We should not, therefore, punish the murderer with death.”
DENIED OPPORTUNITY FOR REHABILITATION
Since every single one of us is destined to die, ending a life by judicial execution is not only mostly vengeful, it denies the opportunity for the rehabilitation of those amenable to it, and shortens the period of ‘punishment’. In any event, I think it is innately unfair, since the rich with the means to hire top-notch legal representation are almost certain to evade execution. And those of a certain integumental hue, those with connections, celebrities and popular individuals will never face the gallows.
Our society is such that, any popular, politically connected, church-affiliated, fair-skinned woman from upper St Andrew with a national honour behind her name could commit the most egregious capital murder and never face the gallows. Until we are prepared to hang such an individual, we should hang nobody. Hanging stinks of hypocrisy, unfairness and prejudice on several levels. In fact, upperclass citizens should be held to a higher standard than citizens from the lower class, who have been socialised by aggression, violence and an ‘alternate morality’ suited for survival in their environment.
Therefore, at the end of our rope will be the typical AfroCaribbean-looking male who was psychologically and physically abused as a child, raised amid conflict and strife; unwanted, unloved and perhaps even hated by his parents or guardians; scorned by the community and ignored by the wider society; undereducated or uneducated and unskilled; influenced and recruited by criminal gangs.
In addition to the aforementioned problems with capital punishment, there are always the innocent who end up being convicted, often due to inadequate legal representation. We really should abolish capital punishment and focus on other ways to reduce crime and murders.
RECRUIT COMMUNITIES
We must see to our needy and impressionable youth in underprivileged and disenfranchised communities. We must continue to recruit communities i n our efforts against crime. Community groups, community watch, community reporting should be at t he forefront. Plea bargaining will help get though the backlog of cases, but we should also enable ways for convicts to apologise publicly by video recordings and offer to adjust prison time accordingly.
Many ‘bad men’ remain remorseless, retain their badness status behind bars, and receive ‘street cred’ for ‘graduating’ from prison. Seeing them apologise to their victims and/or victim’s family and society for their wrongs will smash the enigmatic, badness aura that so many enjoy. Imagine the impact of a convicted rapist apologising on television for his crime and entreating like-minded individuals not to go down that path in life. Imagine a ‘shotta’ saying sorry to those whose lives he destroyed and saying sorry to society for his wrongs. His request that other shottas stop their nefarious activities would go a far way in reducing crime and murder.
In interviewing ex-convicts, and retired prison warders, I realise that other prisoners give nuff respek to imprisoned shottas and those who behead their victims. Social re-engineering, along with extended incarceration, discipline and rehabilitation tailored towards education and psychological upliftment, instead of a humdrum existence and spontaneous carousing, will help reduce our crime and murder rates.