Bernd Carpenter

The right of the individual literally and figuratively overshadows the rights of other individuals and of the collective. The protection of perpetrators seems to be an ultimate act of humanity in which every criminal should have a chance at a second life. The taboo on the death penalty is a human failing. Death is already entrenched in the state. Choices in many policy areas have death as an option or even as a habit. The return of the death penalty is also a choice, which need not be inhumane in the light of other human decisions.

Crime and punishment are two things that have been inextricably linked throughout history and are likely to remain. The problem with living together is that not everyone adheres to the agreed laws and rules. Punishments should be just. At least, why? Should a punishment have the effect or the purpose of making the punished person a better person? Or does the requirement of retaliation apply in the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Also to prevent taking the law into your own hands.

Body, life, liberty, honour and property, they are at the disposal of the state if the judge makes a well-founded choice when it is proven that the defendant is guilty. Punishments are necessary to do justice to the victim and to protect society. That’s what we agreed. It is a social contract, grown over centuries and enshrined in laws. A punishment that a person receives is suffering that he receives for the evil he did.

Suffering the same as the victim, this premise has died a historic death. In the case of stealing, cutting off a hand still takes place in a few countries, but in the countries that claim to be more developed, positive punishment goals are chosen in relation to retribution: deterrence, harmlessness, rehabilitation and restoration.

In general prevention, there are punishments to show others that crime does not pay and that punishment follows. When it comes to special prevention, the idea is to prevent the criminal himself from being tempted again and making a mistake again. Eventually, everyone can return and be part of the social structure after resocialization, and so the criminal also has a chance of recovering his life.

Johannes Nathan was the last person to receive the death penalty in the Netherlands on 31 October 1860 on the basis of ordinary criminal law and to carry it out. In 1870, the death penalty was consigned to the history books. It has been more than 157 years since “we” carried out the cruel and uncivilized punishment. Or not?

In the last days of the Second World War, the Dutch government-in-exile decided to reintroduce the death penalty, arguing that it was feared that otherwise the people would take the law into their own hands. Artur Albrecht, a German war criminal responsible for torture and executions, died on March 21, 1952, from firing squad. In 1983, a constitutional amendment stipulated that the death penalty could no longer be imposed. In 2003, the Netherlands was also one of the signatories to Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. And it doesn’t even extradite suspects to countries where they can be sentenced to death if convicted.

For example, the two positive punitive goals of resocialization and recovery are more important than the principles of retribution: general and specific prevention. Civilization, however, brings choices. Even when it comes to life and death.

Abortion is the termination of future life. The Criminal Code also contains the rules for abortion. Abortion is allowed until the child can survive outside the woman’s body. For the Criminal Code, that limit is 24 weeks. In practice, doctors use the limit of 22 weeks.

”That’s something else entirely, the right to choose lies with the woman.” Yes, because “we” have agreed to do so. In 2015, more than 30,000 abortions took place. Mostly on fetuses that would have grown into people who can now have a life expectancy of well over 80. A punishment for not having a birth in the lives of those involved or just a neutral choice that we think is civilized?

Euthanasia in the Netherlands is regulated in the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act. The law was adopted on 12 April 2001. Even before the war on terror, why this comparison?

Because the majority of us in the Netherlands, through the
operation of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, believe that killing out of mercy is acceptable and killing for the sake of retribution and protection is not. The right to die is a personal choice, perhaps no longer only in the face of unbearable suffering, but also because life is completed according to one’s own experience. We accept man’s choice to die. Not a death penalty, but a death wish.

The state also decides who has a chance of survival or not. When it comes to research into and reimbursement of medicines, it is up to the market to set an acceptable price. The medicine for cystic fibrosis is still reimbursed by health insurance. Social pressure or negotiation game?

EUR 170 000 was considered unacceptably high. Every life has its price and has a value. By the way, the policy is that very expensive medicines do not simply enter the care package. If there is no result that is acceptable in price, you may die.

Not to mention the animals. Once again, we have mutually agreed on the basis of tradition – it is the fact – that animals are goods and that the slaughter or the shot is waiting for them. However, within certain rules. Also for experiments for the benefit of humans (and sometimes animals themselves) they go into the laboratory alive and usually come out dead. Death within the economy, pleasure, and health care. In livestock farming, 450 million animals die every year in the Netherlands due to forced death. 150 billion worldwide. A punishment for being an animal.

Not to mention the war. The fight against evil. Bombs and bullets intended to destroy. Strife and conflict as a kind of punishment for crimes committed by states and groups that disrupt the rule of law. According to international law, waging war is in principle an unlawful act. But mandates are again possible that justify the elimination of others – with or without the risk of civilian casualties. Killing as prevention, defense and sometimes even as an attack.

However, the death penalty is a moral bridge too far in international and national law. In the light of other policy areas and major themes, it appears that this is also only a moral choice.

Why incapacitate a fetus or enemy, not reimburse a medicine that could be on the table next to the bed, give a lethal pill to a human being with a completed life or in agony and kill animals en masse for the sake of the flesh and not retaliate against a victim of a serious crime – and protect society – by giving the bullet to the perpetrator?

Time and time again, we measure with moral standards that suit us. Bound in time, place and culture with the possibilities that are available.

Dutroux, Fourniret, Brady and Anne’s murderer, do they have more right to life than their victims? Is their bodily integrity greater than that of the fetus, the animal, the sick or the elderly?

Proven rape of young girls and starvation to death, was signed Marc Dutroux. The Monster of the Bulge kidnapped, raped and murdered seven girls, his name Michel Fourniret.

A gruesome case, the Heath Killers: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. They tortured and murdered Pauline Read, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. Brady died in prison at the age of 79. Dutroux might live to be 90 and Anne’s murderer? Will he be released for a third chance?

Some examples of heinous crimes where there is no doubt about the perpetrator or perpetrators. Where people behave like monsters and take the lives of others. Can the right to retribution be given moral and social preference over the ethics of resocialization and reintegration into society?

Back to the Middle Ages, they say. But no one advocates mutilating punishments, cutting off limbs, flogging, branding, pillories, burning, breaking the wheel or quartering. Because punishment doesn’t have to go hand in hand with sadism. That’s what we think. Although some who have suffered and inflicted inhuman grief would like to go very far.

In social contracts, we have mutually agreed that individuals and the community have a right to protection and that those who violate the norm, rule and law will receive appropriate punishment. Killers don’t get that now.

The death penalty is a violation of the right to life, unless the person has placed himself outside the community by taking the life of another. The death penalty cannot be reversed, nor can life imprisonment, nor can abortion and euthanasia. In some cases, it’s obvious who did what.

The death penalty may not have a deterrent effect, but it does act as a deterrent neutralisation of the offender himself. Discrimination would play a role. Then discrimination should be changed and not the death penalty itself. Change the system but not the retaliation. The death penalty is abused as a political tool in dictatorships. Because other regimes unjustly imprison people, the rule of law does not abolish imprisonment either, do they?

The killing of living beings is a collective choice that we leave to the state that has the means of power to carry out or that the nation says others in the free market can take over.

If you look at a society full of crimes, where killing others is acceptable on many grounds, you cannot ignore the fact that the death penalty can be a normal humane choice that does justice to victims and loved ones and gives protection to others.
Away with the taboo on killing criminals.

There is nothing wrong with the death penalty, as long as we make choices that can be justified. To which the majority says ”yes” or of which the people leave the choice to the cabinet and parliament.

Abortion, euthanasia, a lethal pill at the end of life, whether or not to reimburse life-saving medicines, the slaughter of animals and the death penalty, these are outcomes laid down in laws without taboos.

Let’s do it civilly. Rules must apply in slaughterhouses and in the case of the death penalty.

Bernd Timmerman
, historian and sociologist