Pete’s blog

After the responses I got to last week’s email I thought I should clarify my position on the death penalty, and how I think we could reduce crime in South Africa.

I am 100%, completely, unequivocally against the death penalty. I believe that some people are so evil and bad for society that they do not deserve to live, BUT I also believe that absolutely no one is qualified to decide who these people are. Therefore no judge or jury is qualified to impose a death sentence, nor can anyone be asked or told to be an executioner. If I ignore that belief for the moment, I further believe that our current justice system is neither fair nor equitable enough to impose death sentences. A quick illustration:
First scenario: A man down on his luck, goes into a shop with a gun and tries to rob the place, unfortunately something goes wrong and he ends up shooting and killing the store owner.
Second scenario: A director of a bus company that is in financial difficulty decides to skip statutory safety checks in order to save money, unfortunately something goes wrong and a bus crash kills 20 people.
Who gets the death penalty? In our current system, 99 times out of 100 the guy in the first scenario will get the death penalty and the guy in the second scenario will maybe get a small jail term for culpable homicide. But is that correct? Both men took a risky decision that they knew may end in a loss of life, but both hoped that that would not be the case – in the first scenario he chose to rob the place using a gun, in the second scenario he chose not to perform required safety checks. In both cases something unexpected happened which resulted in a loss of life due to the earlier decision made. In the second scenario it was if fact even worse, because 20 people were killed instead of 1 person. To me these are equivalent crimes, but I have no faith that our justice system will treat them as such. How can we even discuss killing criminals if our justice system isn’t just?

But practically – why would the death penalty be so ineffective? Firstly if you support the death penalty, you have to ask yourself why do you support the death penalty? This is critical, because there are 2 reasons to support it. First using the death penalty as a punitive, retributive system – ie getting revenge, giving the victims closure, an eye for an eye. But if that is what you want the death penalty for, why support the death penalty? There are so many better ways of getting some payback. From a non-violent point of view, you could make the criminal a slave to the victim for the rest of their life, forcing them to carry out the victim’s every command. From a violent point of view, you can have public hangings, public stockades, stonings or best yet, why not give the victims baseball bats and leave them in a room with the convicted criminal? So much more direct and effective. If you are shuddering in revulsion, why? You’d gladly consent to someone being killed quietly and anonymously, but are revolted by a more personal killing? Either way you will have blood on your hands that will not wash off. Ignoring the criminal for a second, using the death penalty for retribution helps no one. It taints the souls of everyone involved, from the victim, to the judge, to the jailers, to the executioner. And the closure it provides for the victims is hollow and short-lived. With the endless appeals that the American system has, that closure may be a very long time in coming too.

However most people see the death penalty as a deterrent to crime – if someone faces the death penalty, they will think twice before committing crime. At this point I would like to point out that the country with one of the highest incarceration rates in the world also has the death penalty – the US of A. Clearly it isn’t working there. But the way I’m going to argue this is that the death penalty as a deterrent will not be effective in a country with high rates of violent crime, but may be effective in a peaceful country with low rates of crime. So the death penalty in South Africa will be completely ineffective. Let’s go through the decision process of the guy who decides to rob the shop – should he take a gun or not? If he takes a gun, he may end up killing someone and getting the death penalty. In a peaceful country he may see this as too great a risk and instead will take a knife which he is less likely to kill someone with. However in a violent country, if he takes a knife, the shopkeeper will probably pull a gun and shoot him (being a violent country the shopkeeper will want to defend himself appropriately). So his choice is take a knife and probably die during the robbery, or take a gun, maybe kill someone, maybe get caught and maybe get the death penalty. Immediate risk of death or possible, future risk of death… Easy choice, take a gun. Simply stated, in a society faced with high levels of violent crime, a distant, future possibility of getting the death penalty has very little weight in day-to-day decisions. Additionally in a society with high rates of crime, there is a general contempt for law – therefore a death penalty imposed by that law will also be viewed with contempt.

How do I think we reduce crime in South Africa? I think we should massively increase the number of traffic police. You heard me – traffic police. Policeman standing on corners watching traffic and enforcing traffic laws. Policemen driving around (with two cops per car) enforcing traffic laws. This is visible policing and breeds respect for the law. Would criminals hijack cars if they know that they have a 20% chance of being stopped by a traffic cop while driving the stolen car? Would criminals rob cash-in-transit vans if they knew they had a 20% chance of being stopped by a traffic cop for a ‘busted taillight’ (as the Americans say). If you drive through a red traffic light with impunity, then you say ‘Where are the cops? They’re never around. I can get away with anything’. If every time you overtake on a white line a cop pulls you over and gives you a ticket, you are going to say ‘These police are everywhere, I best not risk doing something worse or they’ll catch me and put me in jail.’ Overall respect for the law in the society will increase, reducing crime. Simple stuff and the traffic cops do not need advanced training. You have highly trained stand-by units to deal with dangerous situations. All the traffic cop need to do is identify the situation and then direct the elite unit.

There we have it, simple as that