In a recent talk, Jacob Zuma said he would support a referendum on whether to bring back the death penalty or not. This of course has further convinced me that he is just a demagogue and not a man of principles, but it has also made me think about the death penalty. So this week I am going to jump on the bandwagon and give my support to bringing back the death penalty. With the rampant crime in this country the death penalty is the only option and as I will argue the only truly effective deterrent for crime.
First off, it is important to decide which crimes should carry the death penalty. I think the death penalty should be optional for any theft of larger than R1 million and compulsory if the person already has property worth more than R1 million. The criminals that are to be targeted are rich, educated businessman/company directors who commit fraud, embezzlement or dodgy accounting. I believe that by implementing the death penalty this sort of heinous crime can be eliminated almost overnight. Why is this sort of crime so heinous and deserving of the death penalty? Firstly the perpetrators are normally fairly well educated and should therefore know better. They are often wealthy before they even commit the crime and are capable of earning a decent living without resorting to crime. The victims of the crime are normally numerous and are the weak, gullible, poor, elderly and uneducated. Since their crime is therefore motivated entirely by greed with defenceless victims, it a particularly odious sort of crime. You know the story, there have been enough of them lately – some company director with his multimillion Rand houses and cars runs a company into the ground by moving all its money into offshore bank accounts, and then the poor employees and pensioners are left with nothing.
Why would the death penalty be so effective? Unlike most crimes of poverty that are normally the target of the death penalty, these guys actually have something to lose. They have a generally nice life and I am sure that they would miss it more than some poor gang member who has no choices and no future in his life. The threat of the death penalty will therefore be far more effective in deterring these white collar criminals than the slap on the wrist and month or two in a health spa prison that they currently get. Secondly since they are wealthy they are able to afford the expensive legal fees required to challenge your death penalty conviction. A lot of the people on death row in America are too poor to afford proper legal counsel and many innocent people sit on death row purely because they couldn’t afford a good lawyer. The white collar criminal will of course only have the best legal representation and therefore there will be almost no one on death row who was wrongly convicted. Then for the actual execution, they will be able to seek the best medical advice on the quickest and most painless way to die and will be able to employ a well qualified executioner who won’t botch the procedure. None of this grisly hanging or electrocution stuff or lethal injection which may hurt like hell, but no one knows because they paralyse you first.
So join me in my campaign to bring back the death penalty for greedy money-grabbers who know better but still callously steal from the defenceless… And also bring it back for anyone who still believes that the death penalty is an effective and efficient way of deterring crime.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew Geddes // Mar 10, 2008 at 12:59 pm
You had me going there….until the last line. Personally, I’m totally against the death penalty and it won’t deter crime. But there is a lot to be said about the white colar crime.
Secondly, why make the rich guy go through the process of legal appeals etc….that way you are taking his money and distributing it sidways. Good lawyers and doctors aren’t poor or cheap. Take his money and distribute it downwards. Rather than putting him on death rown, make him work his sentence. Money cannot buy you out of community service (ok, some people manage it, but a properly monitored community service won’t let you).
Put them on a suicide help line for old (or any) people who have lost everything (Masterbond, Leisurenet?).
Don’t let them sit in prison at my tax paying expense. Use them to uplift others. It’s a huge resource we need to tap into…..
2 Britt Pollastrini // Mar 21, 2008 at 7:18 am
Hi,
I moved to the US almost 8 years ago and I need to correct you on something. The death penalty has been on the decline for many years. 42 people were executed his year versus 98 last year. 37 out of 50 states support the death penalty but only 10 of these carried out executions last year. Texas had 62% of the deaths and the South was responsible for 86%.
However, executions have been suspended temporarily due to a decision made by the Supreme Court. For more info follow the link
http://www.cnn.com/2007/CRIME/12/20/death.penalty.decline/index.html?iref=newssearch
The article referenced is dated December 2007.
3 Steve // Aug 25, 2009 at 12:15 pm
have you read any real studies on crime?
the death penalty is NOT ABOUT executing people, but maybe saving a few of the 25000 people murdered last year in South Africa….
25000 were murdered, if the death penalty brought that down to 24000 , that is 1000 lives saved…
and you claim to know for absolutely certain that it wouldn’t?
violent crime has NOTHING to do with poverty….
why is botswana so much safer than SA?
please get some real info friend…. , and stop believing the liberal leftist propaganda machine….
someone murders your wife and children in front of you, and your justice is, to pay your tax and pay for their incarceration?
someone is busy stabbing your wife to death? will you kill them then? and isnt that a ‘death penalty’…
think it properly through, justice doesn’t become less just, because time has elapsed after a violent crime
4 Pete // Aug 26, 2009 at 9:51 am
The death penalty has nothing to do with saving lives, the lives have already been lost. And yes, violent crime is not always about poverty, but the death penalty is very much about poverty. The wealthiest murderer can afford the best lawyers to fight or delay his death penalty convinction indefinitely. A poor person has no money to fight his convinction, whether he is innocent or guilty. Poor people will bear the brunt of the death penalty.
How many of those 25000 murderers were convicted and how many of those 25000 murders were by previous murderers who had been released from jail?
I would far rather spend the money that would be wasted on reimplementing the death penalty on improving the justice and prison system.
If we get to the stage of a 95% conviction rate on violent crimes and a 0% escape rate from prisons, and yet there is still a high percentage of murder, then talk to me about bringing in the death penalty.
And interesting that you should bring up Botswana, because Botswana might have the death penalty, but it also has very strict gun control laws. Notably Botswana’s murder rate has been on the increase lately, blamed largely on the smuggling in of guns from Zimbabwe and South Africa.
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