THE DEATH PENALTY
I want to organize under five simple verbs my own reasons for thinking that
the death penalty is a bad thing. If we catch a man who has committed a murder,
try him and convict him, we have to do something more with him than punish him,
because, although he must be punished, there are several other things that ought
to happen to him. I think that the whole theory of what ought to be done to
a convicted murderer can be summed up in the five verbs: prevent, reform, research,
deter and avenge. Let me take these five things in turn and see how the death
penalty now looks as a means of achieving them.
The first is 'prevent'. By this I mean preventing the same man from doing
it again, to check him in his career-though, of course, nobody makes a career
of being a murderer, except the insane, who are not at issue in the question
of the death penalty. I believe that I am right in saying that in the course
of a century there is only one doubtful case of a convicted murderer, after
his release at the end of a normal life sentence, committing another murder.
I think that that means, statistically, that the released murderer is no more
likely to murder again than anybody else is. The question of long sentences
comes in here. If the sane convicted murderer is not to be hanged, should he
be imprisoned, and should the length of his service be determined in a way not
the usual one for the actual sentence served? I think this question can be answered
only by looking at the statistics of how likely a man is to do it again. In
other words, how likely a prison sentence for a given number of years, 15, 20
or 30 years, is to prevent him from doing it again. There is a wealth of statistics
available to us on that. I do not think they suggest that the convicted murderer
who is not hanged should have his prison sentence dealt with in any way differently
from that in which prison sentences are usually dealt with.
To turn to the second verb on my list, 'reform'. That is rather a nineteenth
century word, and perhaps we should now say 'rehabilitate', stressing more the
helping of a man with his social functions rather than adjusting his internal
character; but that is a minor point. It is clear that, whatever we may think
about what is able to be achieved in our prison system by treatment in the reformatory
and rehabilitatory way - and it is open to criticism for lack of funds and so
on-it is obvious that less can be achieved if you hang a man. One man who is
utterly unreformable is a corpse; and hanging is out of the question, because
you cannot achieve any form of reform or rehabilitation by it.
The next word is 'research'. This is not part of the traditional idea of
what to do with a convicted murderer. It is rather a new notion that it may
be an appropriate purpose in detaining a criminal and inflicting punishment
and other things upon him that research should be conducted into the criminal
personality and the causes of crime. At the moment we hang only the sanest criminals.
We can get all the research we want into the motives, characters and personality
structures of those with diminished responsibility, the insane and those under
an age to be hanged. But the one we cannot research into is the man who is sane
and who commits capital murder in cold blood on purpose. It might be that if
we were to keep this man alive and turn psychiatrists and other qualified persons
on to talking to him for twenty years during his prison sentence we should find
things that would enable us to take measures which would reduce the murder rate
and save the lives of the victims. But in hanging these men we cut ourselves
off from this possible source of knowledge of help to the victims of murder.
The fourth word, 'deter', is the crux of the whole thing. Abolitionists,
as we all know, have held for many years that evidence from abroad has for long
been conclusive that the capital penalty is not a uniquely effective deterrent
against murder. Retentionists of the death penalty have been saying for years
that we are not like those abroad; we are a different country economically;
our national temperament is different; and there is this and that about us which
is not so about those in Italy, Norway or certain States of the United States,
New Zealand, India, or wherever it may be. Now we have this remarkable pamphlet
which in effect closes that gap in the abolitionists' argument. It shows within
mortal certitude that we are exactly like those abroad, and that in this country
the death penalty is not a uniquely effective deterrent against murder.
The last on the list of my five verbs is 'avenge'. Here the death penalty
is uniquely effective. If a man has taken life, the most effective, obvious
and satisfying form of vengeance is to take his life. I have no argument against
that. I think it is true that if one accepts vengeance as a purpose proper for
the State in its handling of convicted criminals, then the death penalty should
stay for convicted murderers. For myself-and it is only a personal matter-I
utterly reject the idea that vengeance is a proper motive for the State in dealing
with convicted criminals; and I hope that, from the date of the publication
of this pamphlet onwards, those who wish to retain the death penalty will admit
that its only merit is precisely that of vengeance.
(Lord Kennet from a Speech in the House of Lords, November 9th, 1961)
