Something quite remarkable has happened over the past couple of the days. It started
with the launch of the government’s new e-petition site, which promises that any petition which secures 100,000 signatures will be
“eligible for debate in the House of Commons”. And it continued with Guido Fawkes submitting a petition to reinstate the death penalty for
“the murder of children and police officers when killed in the line of duty.” Now national newspapers and MPs alike are adding their voice to
Guido’s campaign. And an issue that has huge public resonance, but which is rarely discussed in Westminster, is suddenly getting an airing. Even if — like me — you don’t agree with the
death penalty, there is still something encouragingly open and democratic about it all.
How far that popular tide will push, it’s hard to tell. From the sounds of it, it’s not certain that a petition will be voted on in the Commons even if it does achieve 100,000 signatures. And then there are the complicating factors that Guido mentions in his text: the various treaties and legal strictures — among them the European Convention on Human Rights — that currently prevent us from using the death penalty. But this is now, at the very least, a live political issue. And it will remain so for some time, I’d imagine.
In which case, I thought CoffeeHousers might appreciate some global context to the debate, via a trio of charts. Here they are:
1. Countries as executionists. This graph shows the top ten countries for executions in 2010. The figures, in some cases, will be an underestimation, as they are only the known minimum number of executions. Indeed, China is thought to exectute 1,000s of prisoners each year, rather than the single 1,000 that is shown in the chart. In any case, it surely executes more people than the rest of the world combined, although it does obviously have a bigger population than any other country:
2. Who has the death penalty? The chart below counts those countries that are abolitionist for all crimes (i.e. don’t use the death penalty at all); those that are abolitionist for ordinary crimes only (i.e. they use the death penalty in exceptional cirumstances, such as under military law); those that are abolitionist in practice (i.e. they have the death penalty, but haven’t executed anyone in ten years); and those are are retentionist (i.e. they have, and mete out, the dealth penalty):
3. The trend away from the death penalty. Pretty self-explanatory, really:
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