The Death Penalty and the UK: Why we REALLY don't need to reinstate capital punishment.

As you may know, I live in Scotland in the United Kingdom, and as someone who very recently turned 18 and so must worry about adult-things, I'm aware that things in the UK aren't all that great at the moment, with regards to the economy and such. It seems only natural that, in a time when things aren't going too well, people decide to make it worse. Hence, it's time for the campaign to reinstate the death penalty in the UK to gain steam.

I always say that people are entitled to their opinions on this matter (a privilege death penalty supporters don't often like to allow me...) and so I'm not saying that people are bad for trying to reinstate it. However, in my experience, most arguments in support of the death penalty - especially those held by a lot of people in the UK, where we haven't used the death penalty for so long that people have forgotten why we got rid of it in the first place - are ill-informed and badly thought through. In my experience from classroom debates, I've found it astonishingly easy to win debates on the subject (whether the opposition admits it or not) because their arguments are rooted in vengeance and hate which, in my experience, are never very good reasons for doing anything, much less the taking of another human being's life.

In this post, I will briefly discuss the current campaign for the death penalty's reinstatement in the UK, and will state my reasons for thinking it it a terrible idea.

So, in a nutshell, the UK government, in a bid to win back the public's love and affection, which isn't going to happen (assuming it had it in the first place), has decided to make the public feel like they have more power over their government than they actually do. We are now able to petition parliament over the internet about subjects of our choice. As if they'd actually listen to what grubby little commoners like us have to say, but that's another matter entirely. If the subject of a petition gets over 100,000 supporters then it has to be considered by the House of Commons for debate. So of course, the age-old debate about the death penalty has been dragged out of it's supposedly nailed-down coffin and is back in the public eye.

History lesson: the death penalty was abolished for all crimes in the UK in 1998. The last execution took place in 1964. One of the main reasons for the abolition of the death penalty in the UK was growing concern over the possibility that innocent people could be executed, after a number of miscarriages of justice, including the case of Timothy Evans. Evans was executed in 1950 for the murders of his wife and daughter, which were committed by his neighbour, John Christie, who was later discovered to be a serial killer. Evans was pardoned in 1966, only 15 years too late.

The problem is, people have forgotten why we abolished the death penalty in the first place. They say time heals all wounds - the terrible consequences which can come hand in hand with the death penalty have left people's minds, and now all that remains is a rose-tinted memory of the 'good old days' when murderers ended up dangling from Albert Pierrepoint's rope.

Now, I'm not saying that the current justice system in the UK is perfect (far from it, in fact). But is going back to a system which we rejected for being dangerously flawed really the best way to fix the problem? That's like using a piece of faulty equipment which yesterday sliced your hand off because you haven't got any betters ideas on how to do the job without it. We abolished the death penalty for a reason, a good reason. So while our justice system is in need of a little reform, bringing back a system which clearly didn't work is a huge leap in the entirely wrong direction.

Luckily, as I've already mentioned, I doubt very much that the e-petition will be very successful when presented to the House of Commons (I've no doubt, however, that it will get it's 100,000 signatures). The trouble is, though, that this is just the beginning. When you lop one head off a Hydra, two more grow to replace it. This debate is no more over than the UK's other problems.

In the meantime, if you are a UK resident like me, you can sign an e-petition urging the UK not to reinstate the death penalty at: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1090

Here is what the campaign has to say for itself, and I agree with every word:

A petition to call on the government to retain its position regards the abolition of the Death Penalty for all offences. That the British people note that only 58 nations currently use capital punishment, as opposed to 95 which have abolished it, further notes the un-retractable nature of such a sentence in incidents of miscarriages of Justice, further notes the death penalty does not reduce crime or act as a deterrent and in US states which practice capital punishment incidents of homicide are higher than US states which do not, further notes the higher cost of capital punishment compared to life imprisonment, believes that British Justice should not be in the same league as China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria which do practice capital punishment on a routine basis and that the death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights and an affront to the values of British Justice.