I'm not sure that I've ever really thought about capital punishment but the current case of a young Australian man awaiting execution in Singapore for trafficking heroin has me thinking. There have been numerous calls for the Australian government to intercede on his behalf. But is it a good enough reason: that our decision not to have capital punishment here should mean our citizens when tried and committed (and having confessed to the crime) in a foreign country should not be subject to the laws and penal codes of that location? Yet I can see how you would want to preserve life. It does seen incredibly barbaric to punish a person by killing them (as the man who was about to be executed via electric chair reportedly said: this will teach me a good lesson.) So what is the answer? People need to know that drug trafficking won't be tolerated and that, when caught, they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. So what do you do with them? Maybe it's time to have an international body policing drug trafficking which is responsible for their prosecution and imprisonment. It might be difficult to arrive at a consensus re penalties - but once decided, it would be non-negotiable. Penalties could be based on the nationality of the perpetrator so there could be no mismatch between crime and punishment.
That would still leave the question of capital punishment though. How do you convince people that killing someone as punishment is not necessarily in anyone's best interest. And if murder carries the death penalty - who sentences the executioner, and their executioner - and so on?
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