Party Vibe

my extended family are from Malaysia where they have death penalty for a lot of crimes (particularly drugs and large scale property crime) and also both an armed constabulary and even some private security guards.

all this has done is raised the stakes.

If someone prepared to break the law knows the state or even another citizen may take their life in return, they actually become a lot more prepared to obtain weaponry and to seriously hurt or kill anyone who challenges them, be they a private citizen or an officer of the state.

on the outset Malaysia “looks safe” but when crimes do happen they are a lot more violent. it ends up with a (small) arms race and everyone living apart from each other and in fear.. (similar situations exist in many parts of the USA)

police aren’t supposed to make judgements, thats what courts are for.

I think the current British procedures with regard to armed response units (and our normal societies attitude to firearms) is sufficient and the best arrangement across Europe. Even many European cops will not draw their weapons unless faced with a similar level of deadly force.

in murder cases the death penalty is often the easy way out for the offender (many murderers, particularly in domestic/family disputes take their own lives because they don’t want to face a long jail sentence).

Also I feel that particularly with young lifers they should be used for compulsory research by the NHS – it should be possible for a psychiatrist to order that every so often are brought under appropriate security to a unit such as broadmoor (or the prison hospital if this is suitable) where they can be mentally examined to try and find out why they committed the crime.. (I think this may happen anyway)

Britain had the death penalty for many offences, more armed police officers (and before that private militias) and private firearms ownership amongst the wider population (particularly famers/landowners) for many years until the early 20th century.

I read a lot of historical crime reports from the local history sites and and there was as much if not more violent crime than today..

in most jurisdictions a serial killer is never going to get let out of prison and will be kept in some form of confinment under close monitoring, so they will have very little opportunity to kill again.

in most cases they are mentally ill and that is precisely the sort of person who should be kept alive so the NHS can conduct their experiments to maybe find out what makes people commit such acts.

Incidentally Britain’s worst serial killer (Harold Shipman) committed suicide as soon as he was able to (possibly quite deliberately knowing that the medical profession would want to examine his brain, he was a doctor after all) so death is hardly a deterrent.