Violent crime abhors most of us, and outrages our sense of morality. But more than that, it offends our sense of safety and well being within our communities. It tears at the very fabric of society. For many, the response to crimes of a violent nature is calls to "get tough on crime". (Philips,J.H,1987) Some years ago, former West Australian Premier Richard Court mooted the idea of the reintroduction of the death penalty in Australia for violent crimes. The logic is essentially, "you killed someone, so we'll kill you". Some call on religious authority- "an eye for an eye." (Opas, P.1996) There's a big problem with this logic. Proponents of the death penalty claim ownership of the moral high ground in their arguments regarding murder, rape and other crimes. They claim the violence and immorality of the crime gives them a right to demand that they be able to do the

(Source: Wallace, Alison (1986), Homicide: The Social Reality, New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Sydney, 93)

Over recent years, a number of opinion polls have been carried out to determine the public's attitude to capital punishment. A phone-in poll conducted in January 1986 by a Sydney TV station shortly after a particularly gruesome sex-murder received over 48 000 calls. On this occasion 95 per cent of the respondents were in favor of the reintroduction of capital punishment. (Ivan Potas and John walker, Australian Institute of Criminology 1993) A national survey was commissioned in May, 1986 by the Australian Institute of Criminology and involved 2551 respondents over the age of 14 years. It revealed that only 26 per cent of respondents felt that the death penalty was appropriate for a person who had stabbed a victim to death, and only 17 per cent favored capital punishment in respect of a person convicted of serious drug trafficking.(Mukherjee, S.K,Jacobsen,E.N.,and Walker,J.R 1992)

The most common justification for the death penalty is that it is an invaluable deterrent against crime. The deterrent is based on the belief that people behave according to the consequences of their actions. Supporters of capital punishment believe if people know that committing a certain crime will cause them to lose their life, then they are less likely to commit that crime. They thought that without the death penalty, the message will be sent to the criminal that they can kill anyone out of the fatal compensation. However, the available evidence does not support this argument. In Queensland, for example, in the decade prior to the abolition of capital punishment (1912-21), there were 131 murders, whereas in the decade following abolition (1923-32) there were 129 murders. These data are not conclusive but suggest that abolition does not lead to an increase in the incidence of this offence. The following table shows that of the major Australian states, only South Australia experienced any sudden increase in murder or manslaughter convictions in the five years after abolition compared to the five years before, yet a detailed report on homicide published in 1981 by the South Australian Office of Crime Statistics showed that abolition of the death penalty had no effect on homicide trends in that state.

Queensland was one of the first jurisdictions anywhere to abolish the death penalty in 1922, and Western Australia is generally regarded as the last State to abolish capital punishment in Australia (in 1984), New South Wales did in fact retain some residual offences relating to piracy and treason, which continued to carry the death penalty. However these anomalies were swept away with the passing of the Crimes (Death Penalty Abolition) Amendment Act, 1985. Under Commonwealth law, the death penalty was abolished in 1973 by s.4 of the Death Penalty Abolition Act, 1973.( Australian Institute of Criminology report in crime and criminal justice 1993)

Research suggests the death penalty is more frequently applied to those who are less educated, the poor and those who do not fit into society, including people with mental illnesses. These people have the least power in society and less ability to raise support for their defence. A 1979 study in Jamaica found that :¡°forty of the eighty-one prisoners under sentence of death were from the lower end of the socio-economic scale. They had grown up in violent neighbourhoods and had received little or no education. Four were illiterate, and twenty-one were semiliterate. Most were first offenders.¡±(Amnesty International 1989, p29) In America, the Blacks have always constituted a dramatically disproportionate number of persons executed, far beyond their share of capital crimes. Especially the southern or confederate states which had been fought to retain the right to own Negro slaves and in these state the rights of black Americans are most at risk.

True, violent cri

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