Comment: As will be seen from the on-line studies available through the Internet (see bottom of this article) Sweetman has once again shown himself to be less than balanced in his reporting - but there again he hates One Nation and has no interest in journalistic ethics. A perfect mould for Murdoch and his croneys.
opinion piece by Terry Sweetman, The Courier-Mail 5th January 1998
Remember how One Nation was going to show us a better way to go about the business of politics? Not for its tawdry stunts: it was going to get down to the real issues that affect real people.
So how come its pushing for a wearying and pointless debate in the Queensland Parliament on the reintroduction of capital punishment just to drum up a bit of pre-poll publicity for Pauline Hanson's office boy in his quest for a nice little number in the New South Wales Upper House.
Don't take my word for it. David Oldfield has openly said the private member's Bill to force a Queensland referendum on the noose was timed for "national exposure" ahead of the New South Wales poll on March 27.
It seems the timing is all shot, but it's a revealing bit of honesty that One Nation probably could have done without because the death penalty is one blurry bit of policy over which it has been fairly consistent.
Boy wonder Shaun Nelson was rabbiting on about "disposing" of murderers to save us all money only last September.
And, in all fairness, maybe the death penalty debate is one we need to have every decade or two just to remind us how barbaric it all is.
The indisputable fact is, as acting Opposition Leader Mike Horan said at the weekend, that "the days of the death penalty in Australia were left behind many. Many years ago".
"We are now a civilised country," he said, perhaps optimistically.
One Nation's move to reintroduce the death penalty for the frightening inexact "people convicted of horrific crimes" would put us in the same league as such champions of civilisation as Afghanistan, Algeria, Botswana, Chad, Congo, Iran and Iraq, and Nigeria.
And, of course, it would put us on side with the great democracy, the United States, where a number of states have been enthusiastically topping people since the good times began to roll again in 1976.
Because we gave up the official murder in 1921, we're a bit light on homegrown data to throw around in debate, so the American experience is about the next best thing.
One significant fact that seems to emerge from most studies is that the death penalty does nothing to reduce the murder rate. Any diminution in the homicide rate in the 38 states that practise murder has been more than matched by similar trends in abolitionist territory.
Worse, the FBI reported that in 1992 murder rates in states that abolished the death penalty were just over half that of the killing states.
Equally telling is Amnesty International's report that in Canada the homicide rate actually fell 27% in the 17 years after the abolition of capital punishment in 1976.
There probably are other factors at work, but logic seems to indicate that the threat of the noose is no deterrent when it comes to murder.
However, the one thing that cannot be disputed is that those who dangle from the end of a rope, cough up their lives in gas chambers, frizzle in the chair of who have poison coldly injected into their veins, never offend again - if they offended in the first place.
A 1987 study in the US claimed that 350 people convicted of capital crimes this century were innocent, but 23 of them were executed.
A US congressional report in 1993 listed 48 condemned men who had been freed since 1972 after their innocence was established.
Of course, our justice is so much more exact than the American system. Just tell that to Robyn Kina and Kelvin Condren, two who were wrongly convicted of murder in recent years, or Barry Mannix who was confidently accused of bashing his father to death, only to be freed when four other blokes were suddenly charged.
And, it is supposed to save us all the cost of every death penalty case at anywhere between $1 million and $7 million.
In New York State, its Department of Corrections estimated that it would cost an extra US$118 million a year when it brought back the death penalty.
Another little matter, one which might not worry One Nation, is that it is all so arbitrary. In America, only one out of 100 convicted murderers is sentenced to death. Bad luck if you're the one.
Perhaps One Nation will tackle that by making it mandatory, but they only want to kill people convicted of "horrific" crimes.
The lesson might be that if you're not getting on with the little woman, a coldly calculated shooting is preferable to a messy bit of work with a carving knife.
Horrific seems very much to be in the eye of the beholder.
Another brutal fact that possibly wouldn't worry One Nation is that death is very much the fate of the disadvantaged and members of minority groups. In America, 90% of those for whom the government seeks the death penalty are black or latino.
Just as black Australians are grossly over-represented in our prisons, there seems little reason not to suspect they would more than generously represented on the gallows.
And given the general predilection for topping poor folks, One Nation might also care
to look at the economics and demographics of its electoral base. It could well find itself hanging disproportionate numbers of its own supporters.
One Nation leader Bill Feldman might have some peculiar insight into these matters after all his years in the police force but he seems at odds with colleagues in the US where they have first-hand experience.
A survey of police chiefs a few years back found that only 1% of them believed that the death penalty was an effective law-enforcement tool.
Jobs for the unemployed were seen as much more productive in preventing crime.
Now that's something I wouldn't mind hearing debated in the Queensland Parliament.
Some on-line reports that contradict this unbalanced article:
Death penalty and sentencing information:
30 years of studies suggest that the death penalty is a general, or systemic, deterrent. (See works by Profs. D. Cloninger, S. Cameron, I. Ehrlich, W. Bailey, D. Lester, S. Layson, K. I. Wolpin, L. Phillips, S. C. Ray, S. Stack, etc.) Examples: a) A 1967-68 study revealed 27 states showed a deterrent effect (Bailey, W.,1974); b) The 1960's showed a rapid rise in all crimes, including murder, while both prison terms and executions declined (Passell, P. & Taylor, T., 1977; Bowers, W. & Pierce, G., 1975); c) Murder increased 100% during the U.S.’s moratorium on executions (Carrington, F., Neither Cruel Nor Unusual); d) 14 nations that abolished the death penalty showed that murder rates increased 7% from the 5 year pre-abolition period to the 5 year post abolition period (Archer, et al, 1977); e) A 37 state study showed that 24 states showed a deterrent effect, 8 states showed a brutalization effect and 5 states showed no effect (Bailey, W., 1979-80); and f) econometric studies indicate that each execution may deter 8 or more murders ( Cameron, S., 1994). Although these studies have been produced by respected social scientists, there are also studies which show no general deterrent effect.
Another significant oversight by that study was not differentiating between the risk of executing innocent persons before and after Furman v Georgia (1972). There is, in fact, no proof that an innocent has been executed since 1900. And the probability of such a tragedy occurring has been lowered significantly more since Furman. In the context that hundreds of thousands of innocents have been murdered or seriously injured, since 1900, by criminals improperly released by the U.S. criminal justice system (or not incarcerated at all!), the relevant question is: Is the risk of executing the innocent, however slight, worth the justifications for the death penalty - those being retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation, required punishment, deterrence, escalating punishments, religious mandates, cost savings, the moral imperative, just punishment and the saving of innocent lives?
and:
Extract from Crime in America network:
The greatest deterrent to crime is swift and sure punishment! We do not have that message going out to the criminal community from the judicial system today. Think of it, according to Justice department statistics....just going into the profession, criminals have a 79% guarantee of success in America. There is no other profession that is guaranteed that type of success.
Crime does pay and criminals know that. There is no better way to show how punishment is a deterrent to crime than to compare the American revolving door justice system with another criminal justice system that meets out swift and sure punishment. In recent years we have been able to clearly compare two systems of justice. One of our graffiti criminals by name of Michael Fay got loose in Singapore and practiced his criminal art on a dozen or so automobiles and telephone booths. He received a fine of $2000 and got his butt caned with a wet bamboo rod. The old American lawyer ploy of pleading his client not responsible did not work in Singapore. If this crime had occurred in his home town of Dayton, Ohio, Michael Fay would have been fined $750 and received a suspended 90 day sentence. The American criminal justice system today has evolved into an award winning performance of lawyer fraud that attempts to show that the offender is really the victim. If the lawyers miss the mark then the lawyer judge will hobble the jury with dozens of pages of instructions to reach the desired verdict.
Singapore has no record of a repeat offender who has been previously caned-it is punishment to remember. Is punishment a deterrent? Let's compare Singapore justice with American justice on a greater scale. Los Angeles, California is about the same size as Singapore with about 3.5 million people. Lets use the year 1993 for comparison;
CRIME LOS ANGELES SINGAPORE Homicides 1,100 Rapes 1,855 80 Robberies 39,277 1008 Auto Theft 65,541 3162
Singapore has had no kidnappings during the past five years and only a handful of armed robberies. Singapore has an immediate mandatory death sentence for those who fire a gun during the commission of a crime. Twenty offenses carry the death penalty. Firearm and drug trafficking offenses carry the most swift punishment. During a recent four year period, 47 convicts were hanged in Singapore, more than all violent criminals executed in the entire United States. Twenty two of those who were hanged were convicted of drug trafficking. Capital punishment is a definite deterrent to crime. An executed criminal cannot commit another crime.
The USA can learn a great lesson from the Singapore caning experience. In fact we could learn so much about punishment as a deterrent to crime, with legal justice reform, we could apply billions of dollars in crime costs and crime bills and completely eliminate the government deficit with the savings on crime costs in a short period of time.