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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 20, No. 14. September 26, 1957

Not a Deterrent

Not a Deterrent

In England, at the beginning of last century, 220 offenders were punished by hanging it was then held that hanging was a unique deterrent, and that its abolition would lead to an increase in crime. By 1837, the number of capital offences was reduced to 15. A further eduction to four occurred in 1861, and life and property remained as safe as before.

During this period, hangings were carried out in public and in batches. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Chaplain at Bristol Prison found that out of 167 convicted murderers. 164 had watched a public hanging this shatters the deterrent theory.

Capital punishment has been abolished in all Western European democracies except France. Altogether, 37 countries and states have done away with the death penalty, without in a single case suffering an increase in crime rate. This is testified by the mountainous statistical survey of the British Royal Commission.

Some of its findings were:
(1)That abolition of the death penalty had not caused an increase in murder in a single European country. In most instances, abolition had been followed by a decrease.
(2)That the eight American Stales which have abolished capital punishment were among the States with fewest murders in proportion to population.
(3)That there was no evidence that abolition had led to an increase in murders by professional criminals, or to the carrying of firearms in any country.
(4)That eminent witnesses of wide experience in the administration of justice considered that, in spite of all safeguards, there was a real risk of executing an innocent person.

The figures in New Zealand for the twelve years. 1936-47, during which capital punishment was in abeyance, show a decrease in the murder rate.

Rev. I. C. Clements. Senior Chaplain of New Zealand Prisons, on the basis of his experience, rejects the death penalty as part of our penal system.

It was stated in a reputable British medical journal in 1931 that "every murder is an example of the failure of the death penalty to deter, and we have no knowledge that can justify the assumption that the removal of a penalty surviving from more barbaric times will be followed by an increase in the crime it is supposed to prevent."