Killing time

There have been far more hangings in British prisons since the abolition of the death penalty than ever there were before. I suspect – though of course I cannot actually prove – that in the old days of what was affectionately known as the topping shed the infrequent official executions acted as a kind of catharsis for many of the inmates’ suicidal feelings. War, be it remembered, reduces the suicide rate famously.

It would be easy enough to test my hypothesis: reintroduce the death penalty, carry out the executions only in certain designated prisons, and compare the suicide rate in those prisons with that in prisons (similar in all other respects) in which executions are not carried out. If my hypothesis were correct, it would emerge that opponents of the death penalty have inadvertently been responsible for the deaths of far more prisoners than they have saved.

But the reintroduction of the death penalty is not practical politics, however democratically sanctioned it might be (as everyone knows, there is a limit to democracy, and the abolition of the death penalty demonstrated it only too clearly). I doubt that the staff could now be found who would be willing to carry it out, despite the fact that in his memoirs Albert Pierrepoint, one of the last hangpersons of England, said that the Home Office used to receive up to five applications for his post per week, year in, year out. Though I do not myself believe the death penalty to be cruel or unusual – our new-found belief that it is testifies more to our historical parochialism than to our generosity of spirit – I myself would have difficulty in participating in an execution. Quite apart from the morality of it all, I would have intellectual qualms about certifying a man fit for execution.