Gail Alexan­der

MADRID–Ox­ford crim­i­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus Roger Hood says his sur­vey of T&T's views on the death penal­ty was mis­in­ter­pret­ed and on­ly 26 per cent of re­spon­dents were tru­ly in favour of the manda­to­ry death penal­ty–not most of them.

Hood spoke to T&T Guardian af­ter he fin­ished con­tribut­ing to a pan­el dis­cus­sion at yes­ter­day's ses­sion on Asia and the Death Penal­ty at the An­ti-Death Penal­ty Con­gress at the Pala­cio Munci­pal de Con­gre­sos.

The ses­sion as­sessed ma­jor is­sues in states from In­dia to In­done­sia, in a re­gion de­scribed by the abo­li­tion­ist move­ment as a "world­wide bas­tion of the death penal­ty."

In the pan­el talks, Hood spoke about his sur­veys in oth­er parts of the world. Af­ter­wards, he was asked about the re­port­ed high fig­ures in his 2011 sur­vey and whether he would be do­ing an­oth­er one in T&T.

Hood said he isn't do­ing an­oth­er sur­vey in T&T but had been fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment's moves to im­ple­ment the death penal­ty. He said, how­ev­er, that there were hopes to fol­low up his sur­vey's find­ing with "the politi­cians."

"It's re­al­ly be­come a po­lit­i­cal is­sue...I think the work we did there (T&T) re­al­ly de­stroyed their case for main­tain­ing a manda­to­ry death penal­ty in T&T," he said.

"Not on­ly was it shown to be in­ef­fec­tive in bring­ing cas­es to court and get­ting con­vic­tions for mur­der, but it was high­ly ar­bi­trary in the way it was en­forced, and al­so se­nior judges and oth­er lawyers we spoke to were not in favour of the manda­to­ry death penal­ty them­selves."

He stressed that on­ly 26 per cent of re­spon­dents were in favour of the manda­to­ry death penal­ty.

Agree­ing it was mis­in­ter­pret­ed, Hood said: "When we asked peo­ple if they thought the death penal­ty was an ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence, it was a much low­er fig­ure, and the num­ber of peo­ple who thought every mur­der case should be sen­tenced to death was very small in­deed."

Hood al­so gave the thumbs down to leg­is­la­tion to cat­e­gorise mur­der, a course which the Gov­ern­ment be­gan, but braked on when it hit an Op­po­si­tion block in the Par­lia­ment months ago. That leg­is­la­tion is now in lim­bo.

Hood said Britain tried that le­gal op­tion and failed with it years ago.

"Ut­ter fail­ure–it cre­ates great deal of ar­bi­trari­ness; who is to say one mur­der is much worse than an­oth­er?"

Say­ing he had been fol­low­ing what the T&T Gov­ern­ment had been do­ing in that area, Hood said: "We in Britain had it in 1957, and by 1965, high court judges said it was a dis­as­trous pol­i­cy and brought the law in­to dis­re­pute. It was even­tu­al­ly abol­ished."

So what were his sug­ges­tions on the is­sue on which the death penal­ty is ex­pect­ed to be a de­ter­rent?

"Much of the crime in­volves gangs and peo­ple in the drug trade, it seems, of which very few are ap­pre­hend­ed and con­vict­ed.

"So clear­ly, what­ev­er ef­fort has to start with much bet­ter law en­force­ment and much bet­ter safe­ty for vic­tims and peo­ple threat­ened by vi­o­lence and death, and you've got to start with a greater con­cen­tra­tion on ed­u­ca­tion of the young.

"In my sur­vey we asked peo­ple what were the most ef­fec­tive ways of deal­ing with crime from greater moral ed­u­ca­tion of youths, greater polic­ing and greater at­tempts to seize drugs or more ex­e­cu­tions.

"More ex­e­cu­tions came in at the bot­tom, so peo­ple don't re­al­ly think more ex­e­cu­tions will do it. It needs to be thought through again."

T&T at­tor­ney and Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice mem­ber Leela Ramdeen, who spoke at Thurs­day's con­fer­ence ses­sion on the Caribbean, echoed sim­i­lar sug­ges­tions. She said re­gion­al gov­ern­ments must fo­cus on pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures and re­think strate­gies to tack­le crime, vi­o­lence, gangs, drug traf­fick­ing and small-arms is­sues.

Ramdeen, who is al­so on the Greater Caribbean for Life group, en­cour­aged Caribbean states to re­spond to the UN's call to abol­ish the death penal­ty.

Head of the Puer­to Ri­can coali­tion against the Death Penal­ty, Carme­lo Cam­pos Cruz, said yes­ter­day he hoped the re­gion­al abo­li­tion­ist move­ment would be able to es­tab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the T&T Gov­ern­ment when re­gion­al lead­ers hold a meet­ing in T&T on Oc­to­ber 30.

At Thurs­day's con­fer­ence ses­sion on the Caribbean, Cruz (head of the Vic­tims' Rights Unit of the Puer­to Ri­co Bar As­so­ci­a­tion) told the au­di­ence ef­forts were be­ing made for a meet­ing to be held in T&T when the World Day Against the Death Penal­ty is ob­served on Oc­to­ber 10.