CAPITAL CHARGES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 27, 1 August 1923, Page 10

CAPITAL CHARGES

AN OUT-OF-DATE SEN-

TENCE

SHOULD MURDERERS BE HANGED?

A BISHOP REVIEWS THE ORIGIN OF THE DEATH PENALTY.

Mr. G. K. Chesterton's saying that "murder is the one major crime which a. really decent man might commit was quoted -recently by Dr. Temple, Bishop of Manchester, who .was addressing a. meeting on the subject of pejral reform in the Memorial Hall, Manchester. Dr. Temple said : that murder' certainly- was iO. crime compatible jn some - circumstances with .finer character than, say, thieving could.ever be. A motion was tabled, says the."Manchester Guardian," that "the time is ripe..for the abolition ot capital punishment and lor the thorough reform of the penal system." Dr. Temple, speaking in support of the resolution, said there were three possible grounds for penal action: retribution, deterrence, and reform. The origin, undoubtedly, was in retribution. Primitive mankind, when hit, wqs not content merely to hit back exactly as hard as the first blow"'was delivered, but with added interest. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" was an advance on that. It did not mean that you must take an eye for an eye, but that you would take only an eye and not two. The ideas was limitation of retribution," and certain people still considered this idea, to bo fundamental in all punishment. Two thoughts lay behind this: retaliation and the expression of repudiation of the evil act. In practice, when you tried to show that an act was something ."outside the pale," you found it could be done- just an well if you changed the character of tho crimmilt as by any me.ana o£ retaliation. When you look into this particular element, which historically exists in all punishment, you find," said Dr. Temple, "that everything that belongs to vengeance is unjustifiable, and everything that is justifiable will really turn out to be met if you can devise adequate measures for reform."

Speaking of deterrence, Dr. Temple said it simply was not true to say that peoplo were deterred from crime in proportion to the severity of punishment. The proof of the untruth wag onrthe face of history. Tho ages whon punishments had been savage had not bee« ages free from crime: exactly the reverse. What rather deterred' people was fear of social outlawry, what psychologists required should bo called the "herd instinct," which might just ss well be called the social instinct—the desire to stand well with those with whom we naturally consorted. Under the -influence of the false theory of deterrence and the false theory of retribution, the penal system contained a great deal that was calculated 'to degrade a man who was found guilty. There was a great deal whose avowed aim was t.o make him feel a brute. "You want to make him feel a man who was, for the timo being and contrary to his true nature, brutish." Dr. Temple contended that this could not be done merely by altering the system worked by officials. Only a change in the public mind could do what was required: The public idea that because a man had once been ,a "gaol-bird" he was to be-turned down was one of the. worst elements in the penal aystom.

Coming to the subject of capital punishment, Dr. Temple said: "I am not able to say that it seems to 'me clearly beyond what can bo permitted to the State that it should take the life of one of its citizens, .if it thinks justice is really served by doing so." To .exercise the^ right, however, wae to assume a "quito prodigious responsibility," and it. did not seem to him possible to argue with any force at all that tho -mere fact that someone else had committed a murder justified the exercise of the right apart from all other considerations.. It was then that the Bishop quoted Mr. Chesterton, and he went on to say that it was not reasonable to suppose that murder, in all circumstances, was the worst of crimes, considered morally. The survival of capital punishment was due to elementary animal fear and to the surviving influence of the old law of retaliation. The experience of other countries showed that the abolition of capital punishment did not, in fact, lead to increased homicide, and the use'of capital punishment quite certainly tended to diminish tho sense of the sanctity of human life. The whole question was one of promoting "the good life," which included a -recognition of the sanctity of human life in the citizens and in tho State, "and I am sure," said Dr. Temple, "that the maintenance of capital punishment tends to undermine that rather than to promote it."

Another consideration -which weighed supremely with him was that nothing was more important to the well-being of society than that public sympathy should be on the side of righteousness and justice and of the State's administration of justice. It often happened that when the public were thinking about a condemned man—or, more particularly, a condemned woman—awaiting execution, their sympathy tended to swing round to the side of the criminal, and that was an extraordinarily unwholesome thing to happen. "It "is a very perilous thing that public sympathy should be enlisted in defence" of the criminal against the law. It tends to undermine respect for the law in itself and belief that the law is a reasonable expression of righteousness. ... It only happens when the public conscience is feeling, it may be dimly and inarticulately, that the law is being more severe than it is justified in being." It seemed to him, said Dr. Temple, that all these things provided an overwhelming case both for tho abolition of capital punish, ment and for the institution, in steadily increasing measure, of humaner measures in all prisons and penal institutions.