Should we restore the death penalty?

YES ...says Robert Goodwill

ANY punishment must have three main effects. Firstly it should act as a deterrent. Secondly it should prevent reoffending. Thirdly it should reflect the public perception of justice. Capital punishment does all three.

It would certainly act as a deterrent. I believe the death penalty should, at the very least, be restored for those who are convicted of murdering a child or a police officer.

At the moment, an armed robber will receive only a slightly harsher penalty if he goes on to shoot a policeman during a raid. But he would be far more reluctant to pull the trigger if it meant he could be executed.

We have unarmed police officers, and rightly so. But they deserve to be protected by the death penalty from people who carry out armed crime.

Child abuse and murder are abhorrent. If a child killer was executed, it would definitely give other paedophiles something to think about on their sordid little web sites.

If they spend their lives communicating with others and exchanging pictures of children being abused, via the Internet, their perverted minds come to see this as normal behaviour.

The death penalty would bring home to them very clearly that this is intolerable behaviour. If we save one child from torture or murder, then it would be very worthwhile.

You cannot argue with the fact that capital punishment would prevent reoffending. We know convicted murderers released from prison have killed again. And even in prison they can reoffend. There are a number of cases where killers have murdered prison officers or fellow inmates. These lives would have been saved by the death penalty

As for public perception, when people see innocent children murdered, such as Holly and Jessica, they feel justice can only be served by the death penalty. That came through from the Evening Press phone poll results.

Opponents of capital punishment point to recent wrongful convictions. But science has moved on and we have much better forensic information, in particular the use of DNA testing.

Many of the most serious crimes can be proved or disproved by DNA and, in cases involving sexual abuse, there is often a lot of DNA evidence available to determine who's done it.

People also argue that the high murder rate in the United States proves the death penalty does not work. But that has far more to do with the prevalence of gun ownership over there. In Texas, where they have the death penalty, the murder rate is growing at the lowest level of anywhere in the US.

Some people will oppose capital punishment on moral grounds. I would argue that people such as, say, the Moors murderers have no morals themselves and they have abdicated their right to life.

I should like to see a referendum on the return of the death penalty. This would, I'm sure, be in favour and Tony Blair would need to withdraw Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights to adopt the people's will.

Robert Goodwill is Euro MP for Yorkshire and Humber

Interview by Chris Titley

NO ...says Frank Ormston

HUMAN LIFE is precious - far too precious for the State to have the right to decide, through its courts or otherwise, whether citizens should live or die.

Supporters of the death penalty argue that killers have given up their right to life, and that the prospect of execution serves as a deterrent to others contemplating violent crimes.

One would hope that in a civilised society we could admit the possibility of miscarriages of justice makes the likelihood of innocent people going to the gallows too great a price to pay for this so-called "justice".

High-profile cases such as those of the Birmingham Six or the four men convicted of the murder of newspaper boy Carl Bridge-water are just the tip of a very large iceberg; these are all innocent people who would have been executed had capital punishment not been abolished.

As for its supposed deterrence, we should remember that the death penalty was reintroduced in the USA in 1977. Since then, more than 700 people have been executed. Yet America remains one of the world's most violent societies.

The death penalty has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with revenge, control, and manipulation There is little wonder many people want capital punishment restored, when the media whip up frenzied campaigns for its return.

Last Friday's Evening Press headline "Bring back hanging" was fairly typical.

Our rulers compete with each other in the most sickening manner to prove they are more horrified than anyone else, while casually planning a war that will inevitably kill and maim thousands more innocent children.

If we are serious about preventing the murder of children, or anyone else for that matter, we would be better employed trying to understand why such terrible events occur.

I do not find it at all convincing to say murders happen because some human beings are evil. People who commit such an awful crime may be mentally ill; they may be traumatised by dreadful events in their own lives; or they may be driven by distorted sexuality.

Dependent on the cause of their actions, most offenders can be treated or rehabilitated, and eventually become fit to be part of society once more.

This is not an easy option. Nor is it a cheap one. But if a fraction of the money we spend on waging war was diverted to crime prevention programmes and to the genuine rehabilitation of offenders, we would be significantly closer to safeguarding innocent lives.

Much closer certainly than we could hope to be by bringing back hanging, which would indeed be a step back into the dark ages.

The death penalty is a tool of tyrants and dictators; it has no place in a civilised society.

Frank Ormston stood as the York Socialist Alliance candidate in last year's General Election

Updated: 10:52 Wednesday, August 28, 2002