What do Cubans think about the death penalty?

"A majority of Cubans want the death penalty abolished."

At the beginning of July, Havana Times put forward a new initiative: to find out what Cubans think about different national and/or global issues. As far as we know, only the government and government institutions carry out surveys; the results of these are not normally very accessible to ordinary Cubans.

The aim of our project is to contribute towards public opinion surveys not being administered by a centralized body and that the results of these are made easily accessible to everyone. We kicked off this project with a simple survey where the person taking it didn't have to give any personal information; all they had to do was mark the option they believed to be correct with a cross.

We chose to begin with the death penalty, because it's a very sensitive and important issue when building a civilized country. In Cuba, capital punishment was abolished by the 1940 Constitution and was later reinstated in 1959; the last executions of this kind took place in 2003 and since then there has been a de facto moratorium, even though Raul Castro publicly reminded us that it still exists, 3 years ago.

The 1st question of the survey looked into whether the death penalty should remain or be abolished from our Penal Code.

A slight majority of 52% of those surveyed would like it to be abolished, 35% want this kind of punishment to apply to a more limited number of crimes and 13% stand up for it to stay in our Penal Code just as it is.

Among those who would like to get rid of the death penalty entirely, 17% believed this wasn't a corrective measure; 48% believed that it's a violation against out most basic individual human rights and 35% think that life sentences should be the maximum punishment given for any kind of crime.

Those who defend the death penalty believe that it's a necessary evil (16%); believe that it prevents serious crimes from being committed and ensures civil peace (24%); and the majority, (60%), think that Life Imprisonment is not enough to punish someone in extreme cases.

Who should decide whether the death penalty is abolished or remains in the Penal Code? 85% of those surveyed think that a public referendum is the best way to settle these kinds of issues; 4% believe that it's an issue that lawyers should agree on, and 11% trust that the government should be who decides.

Conclusions

From our survey's results, we can see that the majority want the death penalty to be abolished. However, this isn't a great majority, the difference is very small (52% against 48%) and this could change if we had surveyed a greater number of people.

The main argument used by those against the death penalty is that it denies the person being punished their most basic individual human rights.

Amongst those who defend the death penalty, the main justification given is that life imprisonment isn't enough for certain crimes.

The immense majority of those interviewed believe that this issue should be resolved by a popular referendum, before leaving it to be decided by judges or the government.

The sample taken for this investigation is not representative of the Cuban people because of its small scale and because of the bias that including only people who have access to an email address implies; a minority sector with certain socio-cultural characteristics. 

Nevertheless, we are happy with this survey because it's our 1st attempt to make this kind of very sensitive information accessible to Cubans. We hope that we are able to contribute a little to their emancipation in this way.

Source: Havana Times, July 28, 2016

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." - Oscar Wilde

What do Cubans think about the death penalty?

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Indonesia: Delegitimizing capital punishment

German philosopher Emmanuel Kant writes that judicial punishment can never be used as a means to promote some other good for civil society since a human being can never be instrumentalized merely as a means to another�s end.

That means that to punish someone for the purpose of deterrence is to use the person punished as a mere tool and thus to do him or her an injustice.

This is the main humanitarian reason why many countries in the world have abolished the death penalty.

Once the death penalty was considered a tool to deter future crimes. But because humanity was regarded as the most essential thing in the constitutions, capital punishment was removed.

As Kant points out, humanity has to be inherent in judicial punishment. It implies that lex talionis (an eye for an eye) is invulnerable to deterrence.

Judicial punishment, therefore, should be a chance for offenders to be humanized or civilized.

Unfortunately, in the case of the death penalty, Indonesia strictly disregards this moral facet by manipulating and criminalizing offenders as tools of deterrence.

The Constitutional Court rejected in January last year yet another attempt to abolish the death penalty in the country, especially in drug and murder cases.

A judicial review of the capital punishment article in the Criminal Code was filed, among others by members of the Bali Nine, a group of Australian citizens sentenced to prison and death for smuggling drugs into Bali in 2005.

Over the last two years, Indonesia has executed 30 convicts, mostly foreigners, for drug-related crimes, defying international calls for an end to the death penalty.

Through the decision the government insisted that the death penalty is the only way to uphold humanity and sovereignty.

Such arguments seem very precarious. One could argue that capital punishment is a shock therapy. Consequently, executions result in shock and or fear of committing a crime and later on a decline in the number of certain crimes.

Execution is a form of murder, which is a crime and contradicts the logic of justice, but for the purpose of honoring the law it is made an exception.

It is because of this exception that the death penalty is legally and morally weak. On the moral side, capital punishment contravenes the values of justice, dehumanizes people and disrupts peace.

On the legal side, the death penalty is a reckless way to justify or institutionalize state crime or murder.

Put simply, we may understand why President Joko �Jokowi� Widodo rejected clemency petitions from many quarters. His refusal appears to have something to do with the constitution, which legalizes the death penalty.

There is nothing wrong with it constitutionally, because as the President, Jokowi has to uphold the constitution and national law.

However, if we accept humanity as the essence of the law, the biggest problem that we should address does not concern Jokowi�s decision, but how to reform the Indonesian legal system in order to transmit humanity.

There are three aspects that need to be reformed: the structure of law, the culture of law and the substance of law.

Reforming the structure of law pertains to the orientation and attitude of professionals involved in protection of public rights and justice. Judges, prosecutors, the police and defense lawyers are not subordinate to each other.

Although formally there is a division of labor among them, they share a common responsibility for ensuring that justice is served.

When it comes to the culture of law, we know that the death penalty was repressively inherited during Dutch colonization. But in the postcolonial era, Indonesian continues to employ the death penalty, as if it was born from its own culture.

Reforming the culture of law is about how to change the public�s mindset about either the impotence or insignificance of the death penalty in Indonesian culture.

In revamping the substance of law, the House of Representatives needs to respond to public aspirations that condemn the death penalty through amendments to law. Capacity building and empowerment of lawmakers is imperative to help them realize the sense of justice.

The three-pronged efforts are all that we need to strengthen both moral and legal grounds of Indonesian law. We cannot perpetrate a crime to wipe out a crime. Otherwise, we are criminals.

Source: Jakarta Post, Charles Beraf, Social researcher, August 1, 2016

? | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." - Oscar Wilde

Indonesia: Delegitimizing capital punishment

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