CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Evening Star, Issue 18057, 26 August 1922, Page 9

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

WHY IT IS NECESSARY. Accompanying nearly every execution (says the Melbourne ‘ Age ’) there is- a revival of what may bo termed a, sentiment in favor of the abolition of capital punishment. This sentiment, sociologists agree, is not based upon any very clear logic or reasoning, nor upon an apparent knowledge of the history of the extreme penalty. Rather it would seem to be a fundamental instinct of human sympathy for, the condemned wretch, for whose material redemption tiheje are always to be found hundreds of pj’sons willing to work without regard to the diabolical character of the crime that incurred it, nor to the possible consequences to society of the relinquishment of its penal laws. That these consequences can be serious is admitted. The history of punishment by death, it is claimed, clearly demonstrates that any froqimnt or sustained dispensation with puirt*‘itnent by death for murder baulks the two great socijl instincts that lie at the root of all penal law, and that demand revenge on tire criminal and an adequate deterrent against imitation. The law’s inability or unwillingness to extract the extreme penalty has invariably, it is contended, been followed by revolutionary party proscriptions, blood feuds, or vendettas. Tho law’s ability to exact a life for a life, after a fair trial, keeps in check tho violent instinct of vengeance which, it is contended, survives in the most civilised men. There is thus much more in the question of capital punishment than the mere argument of whether it is right- or wise to get rid of a murderer or to maintain him for life.