This week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office revised its global human rights goals. It dropped priorities including the abolition of the death penalty, in favour of three broad areas: democratic values, human rights and the rule of law. For most people, this change in priorities will not affect them. In fact, most people will not even know that the FCO ever worked to these priorities. But, for those who do, the change in strategy is worrying.
The use of the death penalty abroad only appears to make headlines here at home when the victim is British. Take the case of the British grandmother, Lindsay Sandiford, sentenced to death in Indonesia for trafficking 1.6 million pounds worth of cocaine into Bali. But, although David Cameron – rightly – brought up her case when meeting with the Indonesian president in July, there was nobody lobbying for the cases of others sentenced to death for the same crime who simply happened to be born in outside of Britain.
You may ask why the United Kingdom should intervene on these issues, but, simply put, the death penalty is a barbaric form of punishment and we should be global leaders in the abolitionist movement. Professor Roger Hood from Oxford university argued that there is ‘no legitimate place [for capital punishment] in the penal systems of modern civilised societies’, a position many in the UK support. This is why it is a travesty that we will no longer be having abolition of the death penalty as an international objective, because it has no place in civilised society. It says a lot that the only western country to still have the death penalty, the United States of America, finds itself between Saudi Arabia and Sudan, in world rankings for reported executions (Saudi Arabia, 90; the USA, 35; Sudan, 23).
In 2013, a number of Conservative members of parliament caused a stir when they supported the idea of bringing back the death penalty in the UK. Even senior Conservative politicians support bringing back the death penalty, with employment minister Priti Patel stating on Question Time in 2011 that she would support bringing back capital punishment as an effective ‘deterrent’ to crime. What these politicians are crucially ignoring, however, is that capital punishment does not act as a deterrent to crime. In states in the US where the death penalty is used, people still rape and people still murder, because the psychology of crime is more complicated than rational choice theory. It is easy to be punitive and take a hard line on crime, especially in the Conservative party. It wins votes – who really wants to hug a hoodie? But actually, tackling crime needs a multidisciplinary approach, rather than reintroducing draconian policies abandoned 40 years ago.
So, will the death penalty be brought back in the UK now that leading Conservative figures support its reintroduction? Probably not. But that does not mean the fight for abolition is over, we must remain global ambassadors for a just and fair society, and that means having uncomfortable conversations with countries we consider our allies, and even ones that we do not. Just look at the names of those on death row who have been exonerated and released from prison in the past 40 years. Read their stories. These people have had their freedoms taken away from them for crimes they did not commit and they nearly lost their lives too. The UK must stay at the forefront of the fight against the death penalty, and British politicians – regardless on which side of the Commons they are sitting – need to ensure that the criminal justice system is fair.
———————————–
Samantha Jury-Dada is a member of the London Young Labour executive committee
———————————–