7/10/2012
Death penalty – buckling under pressure
Under pressure from the protector of criminals group, the govt of Sinkieland has given way to moderate its tough position on the death penalty. Putting on a brave front by staying the penalty, the knees are wobbling. Judges are now given more discretion to spare the lives of serious criminals in this tough weak stand.
The onus and responsibility, and conscience, have now been passed to the poor judge who will now be hounded by his values, religion, by the public pressure on him to be a nice guy instead of the cool disinterested party that is there to see that the law is executed. It is no longer the politician’s problem.
Criminals will now breathe easier and more desperadoes will take the gamble, knowing that death is not a certainty. The drug lords will game the system and carefully choose the pathetic and pitiful cases to be their runners knowing that the kind judges with the kinder tough laws could give way with a few sob stories. The poor ah mah and ah kong or the little boys and girls could just do the trick as the perfect runner.
While more criminals will be spared the gallows, would it also lead to more victims of drug abuses? If it does, then society will become fairer and more inclusive in a way, with drug criminals enjoying more kindness and fairplay while drug abusers finding it easier to get their drugs. The drug pushers, the drug addicts and the drug criminal protectors will be happier. The govt too will be more comfortable without the criminal protectors breathing down their necks. It is a win win for all parties.
Another way to pardon those that deserved the death sentence would be to make them confess and to reveal their handler, get the latter convicted and exchange a life for a life. The main task of the enforcers must be the bigger drug lords up the chain of command. Pardoning the low down courier should be a good exchange for someone higher up. Anyone down the line could have his life spare if they could assist in the hanging of someone above them, hopefully all the way to the top.
Just like the loan shark curse, all the time the people being caught are the little runners. What is the point of catching the runners when the real problem is at the top of the chain? The system should be tweaked only to facilitate the arrest of the biggies. Then the softening of the death sentence against the runners can be justified. Otherwise a weak stance is a weak stance and would compromise the effectiveness of using death penalty as a deterrent. When a deterrent is no longer a deterrent, might as well do the popular thing and do away with it altogether.
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12 comments:
Hanging drug mule and treating drug lord like kings is what the world practice. Nothing is easier than eradicating drug trafficking.
Once a drug mule is caught, his contact person can be trace easily. From the contact person, valuable informations on financial transactions, accountants, private banks can be gleamed. One can always to to a big mafia boss from all these trails.
To launder few hundreds dollar is easy, to launder millions, you need help of crooked bankers, accountants and lawyers. That leave traces.
But problem, mafia boss form part of the elite in every society. These slumdogs married their sons and daughters to prominent members. They have legitimate business interest with luminous members of society. They laundered their monies using members of high society.
In every society, the police must wayang to show public that they are doing job. Hence, those drug mule must be hang.
In the recent case of Yong Vui Kong who is facing the gallows, his drug boss Chia Choon Leng walk free in Singapore, never being seriously investigate.
This is a step in the right direction. I used to be a staunch advocate of capital punishment. After much discourse with people far more intelligent than I, I have slowly shifted my position towards the other end of the spectrum.
I current position: keep the death penalty -- for 1st degree murder (includes acts of terror) ONLY.
Remove mandatory sentencing TOTALLY.
My position on mandatory sentencing has not changed: it is BAD law, because it ties the court's hands such that no defense is possible. For good law, the accused -- even if they are guilty beyond reasonable doubt -- need to have unfettered opportunity to defend themselves.
Forget about the dead victims and their families. They can cry and suffer in self pity for as long as they want. Who cares?
The more important thing is to protect the murderers and drug peddlers and their rights, and the misery of their families. These are poor chaps, victims of society and circumstances.
Their victims deserved to be butchered and killed.
They are trying to distract the people attention from the IMF loan issue by bringing up this now.
Although I support death penalty, I stand is that it should only be administer with greatest prudence. Violent crime often has many dimension. Evidences have shown that the more unequal the society is, the more propensity of violent crime. The more capitalism, the more crime. The only exception is East Asian people especially the Chinese, who are able to exert extreme self-discipline even in ultra-capitalistic backdrop.
We know that USA has the largest prison population in the world, even though she is rich. The negro in USA are the most violent in the world. One stand a high chance of getting killed or rape walking into negro slum in USA.
However the blacks in more socialist and poor countries like Mozambique in Africa has shown to be extremely non-violent. You can walk around midnight in any city of Mozambique safely.
USA is also known for gun violent, homicide..etc. But socialist countries such as Switzerland where many people owns gun has extremely low rate of homicide and zero shooting spree.
And much of the violent can be attributed to PAP and to idiots such as LKY, LHL who are the architect of high social tension.
In capitalism, the rich who prosper by stealing creating large numbers of frustrated people. These people create lots of violent by killing mostly their family members, friends and their neighbours. Very few of them actually go to Tanglin, Bukit Timah or Oxley Rd and try kill somebody there.
Despite of that, the rich feel there is a need to lock a large number of them up to make street safe.
In Singapore, unconfirmed sources indicates Malay stand a disproportional population in prison. We knew the Kampong Malay once upon a time were the most friendly and non-violent people. After PAP rob their land, rob them of self-subsistence life-style and put them in HDB, those Malay are force to work as cheap labor. Even that is sabo by PAP's FT policy. (The rural Chinese adapted way better though)
If Malay can have back their land, today, they will be $$$. I can assured you these landed Malay will be more gentleman than anyone else.
In short, to lower crime rate, harsh penalties to deter potential offender is not a solution. The solution is to get rid of PAP and build a socialist state.
veritas can be very funny at times
The blacks were as violent as the tigers or sharks that occasionally killed one or two men. The truly violent and mass killers are the white men in the context of North America when millions of Red Indians were hunted down and killed, and the brutality against millions of blacks.
In the context of tigers and sharks, mankind killed more tigers and sharks and got away with it with no remorse. If you could only hear the cries of animals and fish, including tigers and sharks, they will be screaming, 'The demons are coming' when they sighted man.
/// July 10, 2012 10:06 AM
Matilah_Singapura said...
After much discourse with people far more intelligent than I, I have slowly shifted my position towards the other end of the spectrum. ///
Wow, you had discourse with 99% of all people?
Hahaha @#$%^&?
Redbean,
I don't think you were close to any real case. Do you hang the drug mule or you hang his family? Has the drug mule studied Spore case law to know that transiting at Spore airport for connecting flight is regarded as "importation" and he will be hanged? Does he know whether the drug contains morphine or diamorphine and whether the pure chemical weighs 14g or 15g? If there are no drug addicts (consumers), would there be drug mule? (chicken-and-egg thingy) Blame not the parents of the drug addicits or the parents of the drug mules, just hang the drug mules (you can't finish them all), and the drug problem will be solved? I am not sure whether those "intelligent poeple" are intelligent, but I know they know the real world and they are compassionate.
PCS
This us one if those things that puppy is doing to win back votes. It will try to applease as many segments of society as possible. But is it a solution leading to more problems?How many lives and families were destroyed by drugs? If the heads of the drugs syndicate are not dealt with there will always be people for whatever circumstances join the drug trade.
Hi PCS, welcome to the blog.
I take your point that Sin has not done enough to educate the whole world and the potential drug mules about our laws and death penalty on drug trafficking. And many in the world, including those kampong kids in our neighbourhood did not know that they will be hanged when caught.
I will like to suggest that our govt spend some money and go to every kampong to conduct classes on our death penalties so that every kampong kids will be well informed. Putting up advertisements in the media is pointless as the drug mules cannot read or will not read.
It is best to go back to the middle ages, paste posters everywhere, if the govts of other countries will allow us to do so.
Then maybe our conscience will feel better when they are hanged. At the moment I think the whole world, including Europe and Americas know of our death penalties. It is understandable that those backward third world countries did not have good media coverage and communications, no TVs or radio to keep those living in kampongs and in the jungles to know of this.
But don't worry, if they read mysingaporenews they will know: )
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