The Myth of Death Penalty
Saving Private Ryan is the film that inspiring me much and changing thoroughly my view on seeing how much a single man's live deserves to save. The simple mission for a platoon of army's turning ironically into tragedy in their way to look for Private Ryan. In the middle of war, so many lives who saved Ryan got killed. That's really the point: human being must be protected with no reserve in the name of mankind.
The next inspiring movie is Schindler's List. Like Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg brought the gravity of humanity deep inside. It's about Oskar Schindler, a Germain businessman and a high ranking member of Nazi Party during WW II, who saved thousands Polish Jewish refugees from being executed in concentration camp by employing them in his factory. Schindler's List underlines how human being always live in the strain of what has to be done and what should be done in the their weakest circumtances. And of course Oskar Schindler opted in believing that he had been the chosen one to protect as many as Jewish people he could save.
The look alike circumtances with a little bit difference is happening now. Some Indonesian people has been cheerful or eager on pushing their government to execute 8-10 drugs and marijuana convicts as soon as possible (and 8 of them then already executed) instead of life sentence without parole or other punishment. It's understood easily why death penalty popular here in Indonesia. They think so in the consideration of giving legal certainty and law enforcement for the convicts and the consideration that drug trafficking due to its massive impact should be punished with hardest sanction, death penalty. I don't think so and could not agree on most of reasons since death penalty has been challenged todays.
Let's take a look to US and Europe where the death penalty's controversy happened for last decades and now turning into more civilized paradigm. Trends on shifting paradigm towards death penalty lies on its doubted effectiveness to lower crimes. From some study on death penalty, there’s no enough reasons that criminals would change their behavior to avoid capital punishment. It's far from common sense that criminals with serious verdict have a clear state of mind to evaluate possibility of being caught and posibility of being punished by death penalty when they were doing their crime. The most possible thing they have in mind is a concern wether they will be caught and what might happen with their trial later.
A recent study of The National Research Council in the US on April 2012 concluded that studies on how capital punishment affecting murder was “fundamentally flawed” because the effects of noncapital punishement not being taken into consideration. A 2009 survey of criminologist revealed over 88% respondents believed the death penalty was not an effective detterent in preventing murders.
The logic threat of death penalty is unlikely to take effect for those criminals who doesn't have rational mind. Criminals with mental problem under influence of drugs, or panicking and feeling too much fear or mental illness will not evaluate possibilities of legal sanctions when they were commiting their crimes. Some criminals don’t think in such a way the deffender of death penalty do.
Death penalty also missed the objectives of deterrence itself. Capital punishment has been installed as a tool of detterence based on assumption that a defendant or convict could put the officer or other people around him into risky danger. For example, a convited murderer could harm any people in the possibility that he would do his crime again. Thus, death penalty might be effective only to deter murderer who is executed from killing other in the future, not preventing other murderers in the future.
The other odd to capital punishment is so obvious. It won't be effective since a rational man who commit crime carefully do not expect to be caught. He or she would be careffuly in commiting their crimes. What almost happens is people could not weigh the logics of death penalty and nondeath penalty while they were commiting crimes in moments of anger or another mental problems.
How about drugs convicts? It's more likely the same. Once a drug smuggler being executed, other smugglers would appear soon even death penalty being put into legal verdict. The side effect this death penalty might turn into blunder: because drugs hard to find, drugs price could be soaring high in the hand of smuggler. Worse than ever.
I think the possibility that drugs dealers could commit their crime again remains low as long as there's a full and tight law enforcement. The drug users can go to rehabilitation center and the big drugs dealer could be sentenced to life without parole and sent to maximum security prison. The case of Freddy Budiman who masterminded drug smuggling while in his jail in Nusakambangan prison means there's abundance mistreat and misguide of maximum security prison in Indonesia. So it's likely a matter of law enforcement than death penalty.
In statistic above, there's larger evidence that States in the US which do not employ death penalty generally have lower murder rates than States which do so. It's likely the same trend happened between the US states with death penalty being compared with Eropean countries who do not adopt death penalty. In other words, the death penalty was inconclusive and debatable. Badly, the death penalty at some extend has nothing to do with the crime.
It was clear as crystal of what UN Secretary General Bankimoon had said, “The death penalty has no place in the 21st century. Leaders across the globe must boldly step forward in favour of abolition.” In the war on massive drugs smuggling, life sentence without parole can be introduced instead of death penalty that already out of date. More humanized, more civilized, and more effective detterence.
