‘Eye for an eye will make the whole world blind’.— attributed to Gandhi

THE knee-jerk reaction to the Peshawar school attack by our government involved lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty. Effectively, this means a ‘reinstitution’ of death penalty where many death row inmates have already been hanged. Many, including perhaps Shafqat Hussain who was sentenced to death when he was just 14, are scheduled to be hanged in the coming days.

I am not going to argue that young Shafqat is in fact innocent (which seems likely). Nor am I going to argue that he should not be hanged because Pakistan has a notoriously weak judicial system (which it does). My claim here is more fundamental; the death penalty itself should be done away with, be it for Peshawar school attack terrorists or Shafqat Hussain.

Can there be justice if one only cares about retribution?

Let us first explore the most fundamental misconception on death penalty: its deterrence effect. On the surface it makes sense: fear of death penalty makes the prospective murderer ‘think twice’ before committing the murder. It presupposes that murder and terrorism are carried out as a result of a rational deliberation of costs and benefits by the perpetrator and that ‘fear of death penalty’ will provide enough of a disincentive for the prospective criminal/terrorist not to perpetrate the crime/terrorism. Could it be that we have misunderstood the workings of this policy insofar as it really does deter crime or terrorism?

It appears so. As early as 1925, researchers observed capital punishment’s deterrent effects are nowhere to be seen in data. Close to a century later, with unprecedented improvements in our statistical and data collection methods it becomes hard to doubt the consensus within the scientific community. In a recent survey, a whopping 88pc of the world’s leading criminologists testified that the death penalty has no deterrent effect (above long-term imprisonment) and 87pc testified that abolition (or reintroduction) of the penalty will have no effect on (future) homicide rates.

In an encompassing review that re-examines studies on death penalty, Stanford’s John Donohue and Michigan’s Justin Wolfers were forced to conclude that there is “not just ‘reasonable doubt’ about whether there is any deterrent effect of the death penalty, but profound uncertainty — even about its sign [ie whether the effect of death penalty is positive or negative]”.

Moreover, the prestigious National Academy of Sciences typically plays the role of arbitrator in social science ‘debates’. They, too, conclude that research on the deterrent effect of death penalty “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates.”

This is a damning indictment of those among us who argue that death penalty has a large deterrent effect and should be instituted on rationality grounds. It seems that the renowned French intellectual and Nobel Prize-winning author, Albert Camus was right when he noted: “the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium”.

Granted that empirical evidence points towards the fact that the penalty does not influence crime and terrorism, but is it still not just? Does the victim’s family not deserve to see that justice is done?

However, can there be justice if one only cares about retribution? Do the principles of justice dictate to us that people trapped in the wrong environment and with the wrong genes should be sent to the gallows? Given the right circumstances perhaps we too can perpetrate unspeakable atrocities. A justice system that primarily focuses on retribution and not on rehabilitation and reform cannot possibly hope to create a fair society. Will we truly find comfort by trying to recreate the pain that our loved ones suffered? Is this how we honour our dead? Are we then really any better than the perpetrator?

It is all too easy to give in to the temptation: ‘they deserve it’, ‘serves them right’. But do we want to build a society that dehumanises fellow men, no matter how reprehensible their actions? If we want to teach tolerance to the Taliban shouldn’t we begin with ourselves, by abolishing the death penalty? Remember, pyrrhic ‘victories’ are not victories.

Given the fact that the evidence that capital punishment has deterrent effects has not stood the test of time and that there are strong moral objections to state-sanctioned executions, let us revisit the ‘cherished tradition’ of sending people to the gallows. Let us implement a system that combines retribution with reformation and rehabilitation. We want to teach our children that two wrongs don’t make a right; it is time for us to start living by what we preach.

The writer is a visiting researcher at the Dutch Central Planning Bureau.

Twitter: @mrsultan713

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2015

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