Death Penalty -- Is This A SMART Strategy?

The recent [14 years ago!] award of death penalty to a person convicted for involvement in a terror attack has regenerated the old debate on capital punishment.

Those who favour death penalty have the following rational reasons:-

a) This is a deterrent against similar crimes by others in future

b) The convicted person, if not "eliminated", may one day get free, and may re-enact the crime

The above hard nosed reasons are often furbished with  more emotional ones such as of  "justice to the victims", anger, revenge, patriotic fervour etc.

Let us analyse the above from our own experience -- and that of others. How smart is capital punishment as a strategy to prevent future crime and terror?

Years back -- when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister and when terrorism was hardly an issue in Kashmir -- India had hanged another killer, Maqbul Butt of the JKLF. The fact that we eliminated (through due process of law) a prospective terrorist does not at all appear to have prevented the rise of terrorism in that State. The fear of similar punishment does not appear to have deterred too many people in the coming decade. In all probability, this added to the fuel of discontent within the valley -- leading up to the unenviable situation as it exists now. Israel and Sri Lanka too are cases that illustrate the futility of the State policy to terrorize the terrorists.

The reason for the failure of the above strategy can be understood if we understand the phenomenon of "arms race". Narendra Modi was actually right about action and reaction. What he missed was that this would soon spiral out of control into a vicious cycle of violence -- unless the reaction is carefully and intelligently modulated

The fact is that while reacting to crime, it is smarter to reach out to the criminals and killers with humanity (call it Gandhigiri, if you must!). In this alone lies some hope that the killer will realize that he had erred in judging us. The side that shows greater compassion also wins the psychological battle for the support of ordinary people; and the rest of the world...

Tit for tat by itself is a rotten strategy. We need to be deliberately benign and humane -- when we do "react" to tackle crime and terror. The aim is to degrade the sympathy that the terrorists have among the common people -- and not to boost this further, and thus strengthen the terrorists. The choice is to be smart or to be stupid...

The problem with the type of sentiments some guys display -- anger and revenge -- is that this simply does not work. It makes matters worse. As Bush & Olmert ought to have found out by now.


Original link: http://creative.sulekha.com/death-penalty-is-this-a-smart-strategy_187903_blog

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