CEN­TRE STAGE

In his ca­pac­i­ty as act­ing Prime Min­is­ter, Jack Warn­er last Wednes­day de­clared, "I am con­vinced that, were we to re­in­sti­tute hang­ings, which is the law of the land, it will have a dent on crime. I am con­vinced."

Warn­er did not give any ba­sis for his con­vic­tion and, were he pressed, would find it im­pos­si­ble to do so. There is no coun­try in the world where the car­ry­ing out of the death penal­ty has been shown to re­duce crime. One no­table com­par­i­son is be­tween Cana­da, where the death penal­ty was abol­ished in 1976, and the US, where it was re­in­stat­ed that same year af­ter a ten-year mora­to­ri­um. Amer­i­can homi­cide rates rose af­ter the 1976 re­in­state­ment, while Cana­di­an homi­cide rates de­clined af­ter its abo­li­tion. With­in the US, the state which has the most ex­e­cu­tions–Texas–al­so has the high­est mur­der rate. T&T, too, has its own lim­it­ed ex­am­ple. In 1999, nine mem­bers of the Dole Chadee gang were hanged over three week­ends. The fol­low­ing year, mur­ders rose by 30 per cent. The prob­lem of crime, and mur­der in par­tic­u­lar, is a com­plex one which im­pinges on many as­pects of so­ci­ety, not sim­ply the as­pect of pun­ish­ment of of­fend­ers. No gov­ern­ment can be ex­pect­ed to solve it overnight or com­plete­ly.

Warn­er's state­ment is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of politi­cians pur­su­ing pol­i­cy which is not based on ei­ther proof or prin­ci­ple. More­over, the Ag PM is or­der­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan, to es­sen­tial­ly find ways around the law, by say­ing T&T should "free our­selves from these in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions." Warn­er's erst­while col­league Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj did so do­ing his stint as AG, thus cre­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al op­pro­bri­um for T&T. Re­course to the death penal­ty, and in­sis­tence by politi­cians on its use, can on­ly be a means of ex­ploit­ing the pop­u­lar ig­no­rance and des­per­a­tion at mount­ing crime and vi­o­lence, by pan­der­ing to the most prim­i­tive in­stincts for the pur­pose of keep­ing po­lit­i­cal pow­er, and giv­ing the im­pres­sion of tack­ling crime de­spite the lack of long-term plan­ning and com­mit­ment need­ed for this pur-pose. The death penal­ty has been con­demned by all in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions, and is on the de­crease world­wide.

In na­tions where cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been abol­ished, politi­cians have done so for sev­er­al rea­sons: (1) ex­e­cut­ing crim­i­nals does not re­duce crime rates; (2) since no jus­tice sys­tem is per­fect, in­no­cent peo­ple will be ex­e­cut­ed; (3) ex­e­cu­tions are cru­el. It ap­pears none of these con­sid­er­a­tions ap­ply to the Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment in this coun­try. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing that the present Gov­ern­ment, de­spite hav­ing an­nounced it­self as a new de­par­ture in the pol­i­tics of the na­tion, has so quick­ly fall­en in­to this trap, there­by show­ing it­self to be lit­tle dif­fer­ent from its pre­de­ces­sors when it comes to bas­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy on ra­tio­nal, em­pir­i­cal, and eth­i­cal grounds.

T&T Hu­man­ist So­ci­ety

www.hu­man­ist.org.tt