Take on Capital Punishment

                Singapore is a state with many death penalties, for homicide, drugs and possession of firearms. Last year, Singapore has reviewed its mandatory death sentence, and check if there was any areas they could lighten sentences. Not surprisingly, our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Teo Chee Hean said that death penalties since this review will be deferred. However, is the system of death penalty flawed and should it be reviewed again by the Parliament?

                The decision was that there are two conditions in which a drug trafficker can escape this death penalty. Firstly, this trafficker must have only acted as a courier, and not involved in the supply and the distribution of the drugs, and secondly, either the trafficker has cooperated with the Central Narcotics Bureau in a substantive way, or he has a mental disability. Teo Chee Hean also stated that “Singaporeans understand that the death penalty has been an effective deterrent and an appropriate punishment for very serious offences”. However, I have some evidence to show that death penalties had no significant effect on the homicide rate. From the New York Times, it is stated that “homicide rates had risen and fallen along roughly symmetrical paths in the states with and without the death penalty, suggesting to many experts that the threat of the death penalty rarely deters criminals.” This is the case, when a murderer is out, he won’t be thinking about consequences when he is killing somebody. It is either the emotions, which affects the neo-cortex to stop, causing somebody not to think logically, or there is a mental illness in the person. If one can think logically in many different situations, then chances are they will not go around killing others and be criminals. People also has many reasons to be involved in drug trafficking. Their family might be poor, or he was forced to. These reasons should be enough for the accused to have an exemption from the mandatory death system.

                Does the death penalty make Singapore a better place to live in? Is it death penalty that makes our country safer? I would beg to differ. As we are getting more and more educated, we are also getting more and more civilized. It is because we are more educated than the past, that we have lower crime rates. In the United States, states with no death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with death penalties. As listed in the 24/7 Wall Street Journal, of the top 10 most peaceful states in America, 7 has abolished death penalty, and the number one, Maine, has abolished death penalty in 1887, one of the earliest to do that. I can very safely say, these states are the most educated ones in the United States, and most are lying in the North, the centre of economics and politics in America. Of the top 10 least peaceful states, all of them have death penalty, and all of the states have some of the lowest literacy rate and graduate students from high school. We can clearly see that death penalty plays very little part in decrease of homicide rates throughout the years, but rather, it is the education and the development of society that has caused this change. And what does the Singapore death penalty look like on the international level? Most humans’ rights activists have been against death penalties for a long time. And Singapore had once reached the 2^nd most people executed per capita, in 1994-1999, before Turkmenistan, which now is an abolitionist country, with no death penalty. So, does the death penalty really helped us or harm us?