An End to Hanging

Tony Parker. the distinguished author and broadcaster on penal reform, discusses a book on the death penalty, published shortly before the vote in favour of abolition, and finds a strange psychiatric opinion. by an unfortunate coincidence (from the pub-lishers' and editor's point of view, that is) this collection of nineteen contributions* appeared in print only a few weeks before the parliamentary debates on whether capital punishment should be permanently abandoned or restored once more to our penal 'system'. Intended as an abolitionist addition to what might have been further protracted public discussion, events have already made it unnecessary and it has no purpose now, and little interest. The argument is settled and the obscenity of the death penalty will not reappear in any foreseeable future. The morbid English predeliction for concentrating with endless fascination on the subject of the execution of some murderers (and even for a book such as this, the publishers have been unable to resist producing it with a cover picturing a hang-man's noose) will now, it is to be profoundly hoped, occupy less public attention than all the countless other and much more important matters of social concern. It has long been true that no argument, reasoned or emotional, makes any impression whatsoever on those who believe hanging to be a justifiable punishment or the prospect of it a necessary deterrent, so it must be doubtful if this symposium would have served any effective purpose even if the issue was still unresolved. Mr. Duncan Sandys and his hysterical followers are no more susceptible to reason than they are interested in facts, and they will be as impervious to the calm logic displayed by most of the contributors to this book as they are to the implications of statistics or the lessons to be learned from other countries. A good hanger wants to get on with killing, not waste time reading and thinking about it. Editor Mr. Louis Blom-Cooper sent out circular letters (though he does not say how many or to whom) asking people for their reflections on the impact on our society of the presence or absence of the death penalty in the penal code. He claims in his Introduction that his aim was 'to present in a dispassionate way the various arguments for and against the ultimate sanction in a modern, indus-trialised society'. If that was so, he has not done it very convincingly: …