From Dr Mike Diboll Sir: My objection to the death
penalty is based firmly on libertarian principles: having a public employee place a noose around one's neck is the ultimate intrusion of the state into an individual's life. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find a socialist and statist arguing for that penalty's restoration. Neither juries nor judges are infallible. Nor is DNA evidence. In cases of miscarriage of justice, under the present system a wronged man might still be released and compensated for his false imprisonment. This is not a perfect way of going about things, admittedly; however, I am assuming that Neil Clark has no recipe by which the dead can be brought back to life.
The United States, for all its many and great strengths, is by far the most violent society in the democratic world, and the 38 states that execute are markedly more violent societies than the 12 that do not. This is because the catharsis that accompanies each state killing is entirely emotional in its character, and as a deterrent it is as transient as yesterday's headlines; the longterm effect of judicial execution in America is simply to further embed violence in that nation's psyche.
Like Mr Clark, I too cannot imagine New Labour bringing back hanging; yet Mr Clark's advocacy of Singapore as a safe and happy society must surely be music to the ears of New Labour's authoritarians and nanny-statists with their new, thumping great majority in what is gradually beginning to resemble a one-party state, a Singapore to the EU's Malaysia.
Mike Diboll
London SE16
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