Jamaica's Parliament is debating the death penalty and will vote whether to retain it on Tuesday. Jamaica and 12 other CARICOM members voted against a United Nations Resolution on the same touchy subject in December 2007. That resolution sought a moratorium on the death penalty. In that vote, 104 countries supported the moratorium, 54 voted against and 29 abstained. The CARICOM countries were among the minority. The UN General Assembly will reaffirm the resolution this December.

It might appear that CARICOM countries are wrong to differ from the international position. It only appears so because we have been exposed to just one side of the argument in the debate. Human rights liberals argue that the death penalty violates the right to life and constitutes cruel and inhuman punishment.

ALTERNATIVE ARGUMENTS

However, a respectable alternative argument held by no less a libertarian body like the United States Supreme Court places important weight on social control. Criminal justice is about maintaining social control, deterring crime and sanctioning those who violate laws with penalties, but doing so within the framework of individual rights (like the right to a speedy and fair trial). Countries like Canada and Sweden with respectable records on human rights try to balance individual rights with safety, security and protection of the community.

The Jamaican Constitution comes down on the side of social control. This is why the death penalty was provided for in the first place, fundamental freedoms can be suspended and 'good government' is defined in terms of public safety, public morality and the public interest.

Another reason it appears that CARICOM countries are on the wrong side of the death penalty debate is because of the political nature of the western argument. Sponsors of the UN Resolution point out that 99 per cent of all executions in 2007 were carried out by 21 authoritarian, dictatorial or repressive regimes. Their goal is to promote democracy in those countries as a means of abolishing the death penalty.

This doesn't apply to the CARICOM countries which, in fact, score better on democracy than many of the abolitionist countries themselves. Indeed, democracy and its values of freedom are under threat by criminals causing fear for the safety and security of family, state and business. When people fear for their children going to school, fear for themselves going to work, to study, or to pray, then freedom comes to mean very little.

CARICOM states are right to subscribe to the social control side of the argument as other countries do, and the moratorium movement is not primarily aimed at democracies that carry out the death penalty in a transparent way which ensures that the law is being followed and the victims are being punished for criminal and not political offences. One can actually support the death penalty in the Caribbean's democratic context and support the moratorium movement otherwise, considering that the death penalty is very often used elsewhere as a means of political or regime repression, both secular and religious.

PARLIAMENT'S NEXT STEP

The UN Resolution wants UN members to report to the secretary general on the transparency of their criminal justice systems. Should the Jamaican Parliament vote to retain the death penalty and resume execution it should sensitise the UN to its particular situation. It must make the UN members understand a number of things.

The vote in Parliament was open and bipartisan with the backing of the two parliamentary parties and members of Parliament voting according to their conscience and the conscience of their constituents.

The members voted with due regard to the UN's warning that "any miscarriage or failure of justice in the implementation of the death penalty is irreparable and irreversible". Members dug deeply to consider their personal and religious beliefs.

Members of Parliament are also aware that, as the UN says, "There is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty," and respectfully disagree since those who have murdered and paid the penalty of execution suffer the ultimate deterrent. Besides, no one naïvely believes that execution by itself will stop others.

Jamaican governments have restrained themselves for 20 years (since 1988), during which time there were no executions, long before the UN's campaign for a moratorium on the death penalty. During this time, governments have been under great public pressure to resume hanging.

The Jamaican public, in mid-February 2008, expressed overwhelming support for the death penalty (Gleaner/Johnson polls, Sunday Gleaner, February 17, 2008)). The survey showed that 79 per cent wanted the death penalty. Regular surveys find that crime and violence are the top public concern of Jamaicans, more consistently so since 2005.

The Jamaican Government and people, therefore, reject the charge of those countries and NGOs who say states which practise the death penalty are barbaric, or law-breakers, or state killers. Jamaica stands by its proud record as a law-abiding state that proposed the recognition of International Human Rights Day, does not fight wars but supports international peace, supports the dignity of people through the realisation of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and has advocated a new, fair and just international order, among other principles, including reform of the United Nations along more democratic lines, so that some strong powers do not impose their will on others, less strong.

The Jamaican people face violence of crisis proportions affecting their safety and security. In 2007, the murder rate, already among the highest in the world per capita, increased by 17 per cent. Most painful was that 65 children, 146 women and 19 policemen were among those murdered. Up to mid-November this year, about 70 children had been reported murdered and the murder rate of women had increased by 30 per cent.

FAILURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

The Jamaican society is under siege largely because of the failure of the international community to bring pressure to bear on the deportation of criminals from developed countries to the Caribbean; the gun trade that gun-producing countries must be held morally accountable for, and failure to curb drug-consumption by rich countries.

Jamaica's security forces and the World Bank agree that all of these are critical factors behind murders in Jamaica. Jamaica has made repeated efforts to get the deporting, gun-producing and drug-consuming countries to cooperate with its security concerns to no avail.

The United Nations intends to reintroduce the resolution for suspending capital punishment each year. Jamaica and the Caribbean will be under pressure every year to suspend and eventually abolish the death penalty. We have to keep the debate open and keep searching for a number of solutions to crime and violence.

Capital punishment might turn out not to be a permanent solution, but at least a temporary one necessary in these times. It is a decision over which we must have control and we can have that control by locating the power in our own regional judicial body, the Caribbean Court of Justice.There is no need to be confrontational towards the UN. But if we do not talk back others in their ignorance will think of us as among the worse violators of human rights.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.