Evening Star Newspaper, January 12, 1930, Page 91

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY 12, 1930. — e — Stop Capital Punishment, Says British Penologist BY E. ROY CALVERT, British Penologist. APITAL punishment revolts our noblest sensibilities; it is im- moral, futile, unnecessary as a deterrent and fundamentally wrong. The very belief in the sanctity of human life which gives us a hor- yor of murder as one of the greatest of all crimes equally forbids us to take the lifzs of the murderer. The whole basis of Christian ethics is that our attitude to any man, no mat- ter how evil or depraved he may be, must be redemptive. The death penalty is a crude sur- vival of the retributive theory of punishment which offers no scope for reform.” E. R. Calvert, noted British penologist, in this way denounced capital punishment and expressed his opposition to the death penalty during a recent visit to the United States. Mr. Calvert is a member of the executive committee of the Howard League for Penal Reform, author of “Capital Punishment in the Twentieth Cen- tury” and numerous other books on the same subject. He is also secretary of the National Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, founded by Lord Buckmaster, P. C., in in 1924, which is one of the most powerful penological groups in Great Britain, uniting, as it does, all prison-reform organizations. A bill to abolish capital punishment reachegd jts second reading in Parliament last year. The British advocate of the abolition of the death penalty came to America a few weeks ago for the purpose of getting in touch with various leagues to abolish capital punishment, He was met by representatives of the Prison Association of New York, the Americah Prison Association, the penological department of the Russell Sage Foundation and the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment. MI WANTED to get first-hand knowledge of the American crime situation, because for some time past I have realized that there has been a very grave misunderstanding about it,” began Mr. Calvert. *“Over in Europe we hear wild stories about crime in certain Ameri- can cities, particularly in Chicago. I believe that these stories are misleading and exag- gerated, and that they are responsible for con- siderable international friction. Europeans feel that if Americans really have the staggering number of crimes in their leading cities that they are reputed to have, conditions must be intolerable over here, and that Chicago and other like places are centers to avoid assidu- ously and dislike enormously. Anglo-American relations are thus seriously affected, for they are inevitably interwoven and influenced by the crime situation. “Thus my principal purpose in studying your penal institutions and conferring with your penal-reform societies was to give people back home the real truth regarding the matter. I do not pretend that in a few weeks I have grasped the key to the whole crime situation E. Roy Calvert, famous English penologist. in America. I fully understand that it is a question which has long been occupying your best minds. But I think I have discovered some of the problems-and difficulties involved. In the first place, I have learned that these wildly extravagant stories are largely based on a quite genuine misunderstanding of your crime statistics. Very eminent penologists here agree that the United States’ crime statistics are un- reliable because they lack uniformity in their source material. But even though they were accurate, they would still be misleading, for the reason that you include all your murders under the term ‘homicide.” We use two ‘mur- der’ and ‘manslaughter’ People in England compare your number of homicides with the number of murders at home, and you can readily see how they are bound to arrive at an extremely erroneous conclusion. “You have many more deliberate murders than we have in England, although, for the reasons I have given, they are not nearly so bad as the misleading reports suggest. In so far as you have more murders, they are due, perhaps, to the fact that you have in your social life certain problems of which England knows nothing The homicidal rate of a coun- try is influenced by many different factors, such as the racial composition and industrial life of its people and the degree of efficiency with which justice is administered. You have, for instance, many races intermingling. I am Because it is not necessary as a deterrent. If it were, murder would * have increased in the many countries which have already abolished the death penalty. This has not happened. Because it is irrevocable. There have been proved cases of the eon- viction of innocent men. g Because it is so horrible that juries are encouraged to bring in ver- ~ « dicts contrary to the facts, thereby endangering society by allowing guilty men to go free. 4 Because it inflicts untold sufl'er;ng on the prison officials upon whom . U'» rests the responsibility of carrying out the death sentence. ; Because capital punishment is an advertisement of murder. The )+ epectacle of a man fighting for his life creates a dramatic interest which results in the widest publicity being given the morbid details of murder trials, with most demoralizing effects upon many who read them. 6 Because it inflicts suffering on the innocent relatives of the con- ¢ demned person without nllcviating the suger;ng of the murdered person’s friends. ’7 Because our very belief in the sancti(y of human life, which fives * us a horror of murder as one of the greatest of all crimes, equn"y forbids us to take the life of the murderer. 8 Because we do not want to be the last country to do the right thing. * Many countries, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Bel- gium, Switzerland and Queensland, and eight States in the United States have already found that t}lcy can do quite well without enpitsl punis})ment. not suggesting that these people of foreign blood have more pronounced criminal tenden- cies than any others, but the fact is that when you have different elements mixed, you are certain to get racial animosity and maladjust- ment. The American-born child of foreign parents must find it particularly difficult to achieve adjustment with mixed elements war- ring within him. ¢JINGLAND gets a higher percentage of con- i victions for crime than America does. A much larger percentage of our criminals are brought to punishment. Of course, no punish- ment is going to stop pathological crimes, those committed by the mentally unbalanced or the emotionally disturbed or the subnormal per- sons, who kill in outburst of uncontrollable passion. Punishment is only going to stop pre- meditated crime. I am told that English jus- tice is considered much more severe, but, on the other hand, you execute three times as many people in propertion to population as we do in England. In America a lawbreaker is given a sentence of five or six years, while the English lawbreaker is sentenced to six or more months for a corresponding crime. “England has, by the certainty of conviction, practically eliminated hold-ups for robbery. Most of our crimes are pathological in origin, and less than 10 per cent are committed for mercenary motives. That 10 per cent inzludes poisonings for gain and similar erisme,. The hold-up and gang murders are pract’:ally un- kncwn, and I believe it has been stov,ped by the efficiency of our courts and police. American penalties are usually so severe Znat they mili- tate against certainty of eon-stion. I do not wish to criticise American methods in deal- ing with crime, and in most cases I am simply repeating what has been told me by various au- thorities on the subject. I am mnot basing my opinions on observance alone.” Mr. Calvert then discussed capital punish- ment, which he calls an “advertisement of murder.” “We have less crime in England not because of capital punishment, but despite it. If we abolished it, we would have even less. We should"reduce the number of eapital-punish- ment sentences in connection with pathological crimes—crimes committed in moments of pas- sion, due to sex, rage, jealousy, fear or drink, when the perscn committing the offense is in- capable of considering the consequences of his action. Those murders which can truly be called premeditated form a very small per- centage of the whole and are usually commit- ted by perscns so convinced of their own clev- erness that th2y think they will never be found out. Obvicusly, if, as happens Im most “in- stances, the murderer is so dominated by pas- sion that he is incapable of considering con- sequences or if he is confident that he will es- cape detection, no threat of punishment is likely to constitute an effective deterrent. “People say that capital punishment is a de- terrent. But in order to justify capital punish- ment, even on grounds of expediency, it is not enough to show that it is a deterrent; it must be shown to be the most effective deterrent. It would be idle to deny that the death penalty is & deterrent, but so was torture in the Middle Ages. The vital question i whether or not capital punishment, like torture, ean .be re- placed by cther penalties not open to such grave objections, “Thumb-screws, racks, hanging by the fin- gers and other fcrms of torture employed were deterrents, but they were found to be less ef- fective than other punishments. The real ob- jection to torture in the Middle Ages was not that it was cruel, but that one defeated his own object in the use of it. It was not po- tent in getting the truth from offenders. The real acid test of this matter of deterrency is made through practice, not theory. “IN NORWAY, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, Switzerland, Rumania, Denmark, Queens- land, Australia, and other countries which have abolished capital punishment the crime situa- tion has in no single case been adversely af- fected by the change in the nature of the pen- alty. If the death penalty were the only ef- fective deterrent, surely murders would have increased in those abolitionist countries which have already made the experiment. “Those States in America which have no capital penalty certainly occupy a favorable positicn in relation to those which retain it, as the following facts show: “Statistics are only available for the 26 States known as the ‘registration area.” Of these, the State which has the fewest deaths by violence is Maine, where capital punish- ment has been abolished since 1887. Four of the next seven States in order of lowest homi- eidal rates are abolitionist States. The eight E£tates within the area having the highest LUmicidal rates all retain capital punishment. From these facts it is clear that the United States takes her place among other countries in testifying that the death®penalty offers no security from murders and can safely be dis- pensed with, “Crimes of violence, in some cases, are con- sidered in the light of a profession in America, because they pay. As soon as you perfect your machinery of dispensing swift justice and pun- ishment you will put a stcp to this flourishing business. Improvement of social conditions, more efficiency on the part of the police and regulation of the sale of firearms will all help to curb crime far more than capital punish- ment will. The latter leads to sensationalism, and sensationalism leads to imitative erime. The whele combination has terrible effects on children. “There is a terrific glamour about a murder - trial. The spectacle of a person fighting for-his life against the whole forces of the State im- . troduces a gladiatorial element into a murder trial which provokes extraordinary public in- terest. The utmost publicity is given to it. People of inadequate self-contrcl are thereby enabled to dwell upon the details of such crimes, with a real danger of repeating them. : The morbidly disposed brood about it and, as certain people are highly susceptible to sug- gestion, this often causes the beginning of a cycle of like crime, “THERE is much evidenec to show that the unhealthy interest in murder trials, stimulated by capital punishment, often leads to morbid hero worship of the criminal and in some cases even to imitative crime. “Another objection to the death penalty is #ts irrevocability, for there have been proved cases of the conviction of innocent men. There is little chance of an error of justice coming to light in a capital crime, since after a few weeks the condemned person is executed and no lon- ger able to plead his case. In the future, when our knowledge of human nature becomes more comprehensive, we will be more convinced of the fallibility of human justice. “No punishment recognized by law infiicts suffering upon so many innocent persons as does the death penalty. Foremost among these are the prison officials upon whom falls the re- sponsibility of carrying cut the sentence, who feel such an acute sense of personal shame in doing it. There is something wrong with an act that lessens the self-respect of those who accomplish it. Even among the strongest sup- porters of the death penalty few would them-~ - selves be willing to carry it out. We have no right to ask our public servants to do in our behalf that to which we have a moral objee- tion ourselves. “The attitude of the man on the street %@ a public executioner reflects the universal oppo- sition to the death penalty. Nobody loves an executioner. Few women care to marry exe- cutioners and not many people want them for intimate friends. “WE MUST remember, too, the death pén=- alty inflicts cruel suffering upon the in- nogent family of the condemned man without in "any way alleviating the suffering of the family of his victim. In executing the mur- derer we are torturing all his innocent rels- tives. No matter how bad a man is his mother is never going to cease loving him. She lives on to suffer long after he has been put out of the way, beyond all suffering, “Capital punishment undoubtedly demorale izes the prison population. After an execution the prisoners are all filled with & desire for vengeance, and when they are released they put it into effect. Capital punishment is im- moral and a marked contradiction to Chris- tianity. It is a concrete denial of our belief in the value of human personality. In reality it is a smoke-screen that obscures the real issue, After we have killed a murderer we deceive our- selves into thinking we have seftled the whole matter. But we have merely shelved it. We ought not to inflict vengeance. What we want primarily is to stop murder. We must catch and restrain the offender, but capital punish- ment aetually hinders the achievement of this certainly of conviction on which the real ef- ficioney of punishment is based.” ; (Coporight, 1930.)