THE DEATH PENALTY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22231, 23 October 1937, Page 9

THE DEATH PENALTY

TO THE EDITOR OV THE PRES 3. Sir, —There are one or two things which I hope our Government will find time to do before the next election. Fortunately, these all are things that do not demand the expenditure of a lot of money, but will nevertheless, I think, rejoice the heart of thos*e who are really interested in the progress of mankind. Such things are: the abolition of the oath of allegiance (the whole philosophy of oaths surely belongs to an outgrown mode of thought); the abolition of the compulsory clauses of the Defence Act (what more criminal than a State which tries to make men kill their brothers?), and last, and perhaps most important oi all, the abolition of the death penalty. Regarding this last, I came across the following while reading an Australian paper. In 1915 Queensland, the first and only state in the British Empire to do so, abolished the death penalty. Now it is a common objection to such abolition to believe that murders would then increase. Although this, if true, would not affect the principle involved, viz., the sacredness of the individual life of all men and women, whether legally criminals or not, yet the abolition of capital punishment will be made easier for many when they find that increase of murder does not in practice automatically follow the abolition of the death penally. Mr K M. Hanlon, Minister in control of the Prisons Department in Queensland, says: "Actually statistics do not support the contention that the abolition of capital punishment encourages the committal of capital offences In actual fact the number of convictions for murder has decreased, just as all other forms of crime have decreased. Again the major factors operating towards this end are better education, a better standard of life and better social conditions. Yours, etc., October 19, 1937.