S.C.mp
12 MAY 197
¡A. 17. J
NIC
..anging will not slow the crime rate
In the spirited debate over capital punishment, the crux of the matter has become not whether Tsoi Kwok-chicung's case is uniquely horrifying, thus decaanding die reimposition of the death penalty after a lapse of six years, but how to appease outraged public opinion.
It is not suggested that what Tsoi did was anything but horrible and detestable. But as the authors of a letter to this newspaper pointed out last week, some 30 cases have occurred in the past six years without recourse to the death penalty.
It may be argued that if public opinion had had its way. all 36 would have suffered capital punishment. But they did not and it would seem that the only reason why it was imposed in Tsoi's case was that the pressures of public feeling had become so great that it could no longer be resisted.
In short, there was a de facto suspension of the death penalty in Hongkong for a period of six years without any public indication that this policy would be changed.
Whether or not an announcement would have made any difference to the murder toll in general and Tsoi's case in particular is debatable; the fact is none was made.
And in bowing to public opinion, or what it imagines public opinion to be, the Government is in effect accepting the argument that an example has to be made of Tsoi, or as one Chinese afternoon newspaper said: “We should kill one to warn hundreds."
A far better course, we submit, would have been to have warned hundreds before we kill one.
This would not have silenced the debate on capital punishment but it would at least have removed one of the most contentious aspects from the present case, the fact that Tsoi's killing is seen by many as almost a ritual appeasement of those who are howling for blood.
Coming at the outset of the anti-crime campaign it appears to indicate, although again no statement has been made to this effect, that from now on no mercy will be given to any condemned murderer until the crime rate has returned to an acceptable level, whatever that may be.
Our attitude is that capital punishment should be abolished, not out of humanitarian concern for the killer but because in the year 1973 we believe there are other and better ways of combatting violence and murder than by taking a life.
The public frustration in Hongkong is perfectly justifiable. Why should Hongkong be plagued by knife-wielding thugs who slaughter innocent people indiscriminately? And of course the victims are invariably not from the ranks of those who oppose capital punishment in the columns of the English-language press. The points are well made.
The high murder rate in Hongkong, however, stems not Som the absence of the death penalty but the...ck of a credible alternative.
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ive as great a deterrent value as the
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