IT WAS A poignant story about capital punishment and about life and death behind bars in Barbados.
And while Carl Harewood’s recollections of the last known hangings in Barbados more than 30 years ago were a stark reminder that keeping the death penalty on our statute books serves little, if any, purpose, other than to satisfy society’s demand for revenge, a life for life, the retired prison chief’s negative thoughts on releasing convicted killers after they have been incarcerated for decades underscore flaws in our judicial and penal systems.
Harewood was right when he expressed a justifiable concern about the possibility of “executing the wrong person” as a reason for his opposition to the death penalty. We endorse that fear. But he bowled the proverbial no-ball when he argued that “any person who has committed murder should spend the rest of their life in prison – and without the chance of coming out at all.” In short, he insisted, that convicted murderers who have exhausted their appeals should never be released, even after, like Peter Bradshaw, he or she has spent at least 30 years in prison. We disagree.
The former prison superintendent seemingly ignores the positive impact of rehabilitation on the lives of prison inmates, especially those who were young adults when they killed their victims, often a lover or neighbour in the heat of passion.
Extensive research has shown that capital punishment isn’t a deterrent to future homicides. In the years since capital punishment was suspended or abolished altogether in several rich nations homicide rates have plummeted. But in the Caribbean the spate of killings hasn’t fallen significantly, if at all, despite the existence of the death penalty.
“Murder rates in the Caribbean – 30 per 100 000 population annually – are higher than for any other region of the world and have risen in recent years for many of the region’s countries,” stated the World Bank in 2007. Not much has changed since then.
The epidemic of domestic violence in Barbados, Jamaica, The Bahamas and their neighbours and the scourge of international drug trafficking fuel the skyrocketing murder rates.
In his reaction to the release of convicted murderers by Barbados’ Mercy Committee, Harewood, who spent decades, working Britain and Barbados prisons, seemingly forswears altogether the positive impact rehabilitation on prison inmates. He should know better.
Young people whose brains are still developing and are less able to understand the consequences of their actions should be given a second chance, instead of being compelled to spend 50 to 60 years incarcerated without the possibility of parole, as Harewood apparently believes.
Our courts and the Mercy Committee should set minimum jail sentences for heinous crimes such as multiple killings, and similarly those allegedly committed by Arleigh James, who killed his wife and teenage daughter. In appalling cases the system would be justified in barring any release back into society.