Does the death penalty really deter traffickers?

By David Jardine

JAKARTA (JP): When the 18th century Frenchman Dr. Guillotine advocated the introduction of the instrument that would eventually bear his name, he believed apparently that it would be a civilized advance on what had gone before, the gallows in particular. Those being put to death by what the British writer Thomas Carlyle would call "the cyclopean axe" would feel nothing more than "a slight chill on the neck". Far better this than the messy business of hanging, which often did not work the first time, he asserted.

A humane advance or simply a more technically efficient way of carrying out the death penalty? This advance argument would in turn be put forward for other means of execution such as lethal injection and the electric chair; but when the latter was first introduced the technology had not been completely mastered and at least one convict went to a spluttering death. In the case of lethal injection a description of a very recent United States execution in which the convict did not die immediately raised questions about its humaneness and its technical efficacy.

It is of course fruitless to condemn Dr. Guillotine for the uses to which his instrument was put by Robespierre and Danton during the French Revolutionary Terror, nor, more importantly perhaps, for not advocating the abolition of the death penalty. The latter alternative was simply not on the agenda and in any case would have found very few takers.

But it is today. And yet if we look around resistance to such abolition is deep-seated and widespread. Advocates of the death penalty such as George W. Bush, Governor of Texas, play a part in the early jousting for the next US presidency, and indeed issues of capital punishment have long been a feature of the American political landscape. Bush, opponents like to point out, has only ever commuted one death sentence during his Texan tenure.

Thailand recently executed by machine-gun a woman convict for the first time in more than two decades. Vietnam and China brook no argument and their death rows are full of those awaiting the final dawn. Philippines President Joseph Estrada is a leading advocate in his own country of execution for a number of offenses. Malaysia and Singapore, both of which have very public profiles on the death penalty issue, have as always numbers of convicted dug traffickers in their prisons. And now very strident calls are being made here by various factions for the use of the death penalty for drug offenses.

If, however, we forget about that for a moment and focus on the deterrence question we can ask a practical question. "Is it working?" Can the Indonesian advocates of the death penalty for drug trafficking prove that deterrence in the form of execution will solve the problem that so exercises them?

If Malaysian and Singaporean death rows are never empty of drug traffickers, as suggested earlier, then we may reasonably ask what in fact is going on. Might it not be the case that all that has happened is that the death penalty has driven up street prices of heroin and cocaine and so on? As prices increase so do the risks and the returns for surmounting them. Equally, is it not true that the majority of those who are either sentenced to death or to life sentences for drug offenses are "small fry" while the Mr. Big figures go scot-free? Eagles do not hawk at flies, as an old saying goes, and the major players are hardly likely to be selling drugs themselves on the streets or in shabby hotels.

Colombian drug barons such as Pablo Escobar and their counterparts elsewhere such as Khun Sa operate in the shadowiest of ways, far from the hoodlums and opportunists who sell to users in the cities. There is no reason to believe that Indonesia is any different.

One is also aware in Indonesia of a lynch-mob mentality on this issue. Local advocates of drastic action are operating in an atmosphere in which it is no exaggeration to say it is all too easy for innocent people to be swept away, and injustices perpetrated. If a suspected chicken thief can be burnt alive, as recently happened in the Cilacap area, or Mobile Brigade policemen killed by a rampaging crowd, as happened last week in Jakarta, it is very evident that demagogues can whip a mob into a lather where suspicions of drug trafficking are in the air.

Would the mobs be deterred by the death sentence? Indeed, are they? Apparently not, although Indonesia still has capital punishment for murder. Were the many economic criminals of the New Order who plundered the banks and the state treasury deterred by the prospect of execution? Apparently not, although economic subversion could in theory be punished by death. It is interesting here to note an Italian study of the last century that showed a high proportion of men sent to the gallows had themselves been spectators at public executions. The London crowds, often in a festive mood, that flocked to the Tyburn Tree to witness hangings would likewise have included those who would later swing on the end of a rope.

We may conclude then that in many circumstances the death sentence has no real deterrent value. What then is it for if not for vengeance? If Indonesia, or indeed any other country, has a problem with drugs is this the way to solve it?

The writer is a freelance journalist residing in Jakarta.