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It is sometimes argued that since only about one murderer in ten is executed the risk of being hanged is too small to act as a deterrent. But a high proportion of those not executed are abnormal, and either commit suicide or are found insane on arraignment or guilty but insane. Abnormal people are less likely to be affected by any deterrent. For those murderers who exhibit no gross abnormality, and are capable of being deterred, the risk of hanging is high. Of the 131 persons convicted of murder during the five years 1950-54, 49 were reprieved and 82 (about 60 per cent.) executed.

The Need to Deter Criminals from Carrying Arms

16. The Royal Commission were impressed (paragraph 61) by the virtually unanimous evidence of the police and prison service that they were convinced of the uniquely deterrent value of capital punishment in its effect on professional criminals. These witnesses had no doubt that the existence of the death penalty was the main reason why criminals in this country do not usually carry firearms or other weapons; and that if capital punishment were abolished criminals would take to using violence and carrying weapons, and the police, who are now unarmed, might have to retaliate. The Commission pointed out that abolition in other countries had not led to the results feared here, but emphasised that comparisons between Great Britain and most other countries were vitiated by differences in social and industrial conditions and in density of population.

The Need to Protect Prison Officers and Prisoners against Murderous Assaults

in Prison

17. If there were no capital punishment there might not be an effective deterrent to prevent a violent man already undergoing life imprisonment from murdering prison officers or other prisoners. Reprieved murderers are normally well-behaved, and few of those now executed show any general tendency to violence; moreover the prisoner serving a life sentence is conscious that the period of his detention will depend on his conduct to a much greater extent than is a prisoner who is sentenced to a definite term of imprisonment by a court. Nevertheless if capital punishment were abolished and as a result more professional criminals committed murder the number of violent and ill-disciplined men serving life sentences would increase.

The Continuing Increase in Crimes of Violence

18. Prima facie a steady increase in crimes of violence does not indicate the sort of settled state of society in which abolition can safely be introduced. In 1954 the number of indictable crimes of violence known to the police was 7,500 as compared with 2,700 in 1938, and there has been a continuing increase in recent years. There has been the same trend in sexual crimes, which have increased from 5,000 in 1938 to 16,000 in 1954. Too much should not be read into these figures, as part of the increase may be due to changes in enforcement policy, or to a tendency to charge offences in more serious categories. There has, for example, been a decrease in the number of cases of common and aggravated assault dealt with summarily over the same period, and it may be that incidents once treated as assaults are now dealt with more severely. But despite the limitations of the statistics, it is likely that there has been some genuine increase in crimes of violence and sexual crimes.

19. I attach, at Appendix A, a statement showing for the last 25 years the number of murders known to the police, the number of persons arrested and what became of them. The annual total of murders is not greater than in the years before the War, but this is true only if murders of children under one year of age are included. After a bad period during the War, the number of murders of such children has now resumed the pre-War downward trend. If these murders of young children are excluded, the position is that over the period 1900-39 the annual total of murders remained fairly steadily at about 100; and that it is now about 130. There seems to be no current tendency for an increase in this figure (see Appendix B).

THE ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

20. Any alternative to capital punishment must be an effective deterrent and acceptable to public opinion. Imprisonment for life is the only possible alternative. This does not mean that all reprieved murderers would be detained for the rest of

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