The Nation (Nairobi)

Not Hanging Could Be Cruel

EDITORIAL

April 30, 2002

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that every criminal at all is capable of rehabilitation. Therefore, he insisted, no human being should be written off under any circumstance.

Was the Swiss thinker being too optimistic? Perhaps. But it depends on how a society defines punishment. Generally, it is a penalty or sanction imposed for some offence.

The philosophical underpinning is that the pain caused by the penalty will deter the subject from repeating his malfeasance. This is also how psychology sees it.

Here, punishment is any stimulus administered to an organism - a dog, say - as part of its training in some specific direction. The stimulus is intended to discourage behaviour that might thwart the trainer's aim.

 Thus the main purpose of a punitive institution - like a jail - should be to train inmates in both character and skill and rehabilitate them to become useful members of society.

 In other words, punishment is not punishment if it destroys all possibilities of reform. For instance, a dead person cannot be reformed. If so, how can hanging be called punishment?

 Moreover, does it really deter? How is it that the United States, the most refractory state about abolishing capital punishment, is also the most thriving haven of criminals?

 So why is Kenya equally insistent on hanging? Why has Kenya adamantly refused to drop that unyama? For, as in America, it is serving no purpose and crime spirals.

 Kenya has always dragged its feet about it. The other day, it was among several states which abstained from voting for a UN resolution demanding a ban on the death penalty. The paradox is agonising. For Kenya has never hanged anybody since 1984.

 Those sentenced to the noose since then have been rotting on death row awaiting a presidential decision. The cruelty of it is unimaginable. They share every minute with death. It is like sharing a bed with a cobra which always bares its ugly fangs but never quite strikes.

 Because this can only destroy the spirit, it can never rehabilitate. Clearly, it is more humane to hang those people. But even more humane and more civilised is to get rid of capital punishment altogether.