Death penalty as deterrence - the easy way out

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo, in his 2 Nov 2005 letter to his Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, wrote
Due to the seriousness of the offence and the need to hold firm our national position against drug trafficking, we are unable to change our decision....
We, on our part in Singapore, have a responsibility to protect the people of Singapore from the scourge of drug addiction, which has destroyed many lives and inflicted great suffering on many families.

He was referring to Downer's appeal for clemency for Nguyen Tuong Van, who was facing the gallows after being convicted of drug trafficking.
Yeo was essentially equating the death penalty with a firm policy stance and protection from drug addiction. In other words, capital punishment is a useful and effective deterrent against drug abuse.

Yet, the evidence for such efficacy is elusive. I could find no study that has demonstrated this linkage, despite a few hours on a web search. The next best thing I could do was to compile a table (below) that juxtaposes some countries' drug abuse prevalence rates with whether or not they have the death penalty.

If the death penalty protects a society "from the scourge of drug addiction", echoing George Yeo's words, then there should be a good correlation between capital punishment for drug-related offences and drug abuse rates. We shall look at the table shortly.
This thesis of being an effective deterrent is widely shared by many Singaporeans, as can be seen from comments in various blogs, but that doesn't mean it is valid. It may be more intuitive, or more in line with our authoritarian natures, just like how parents may believe that corporal punishment makes for better morals in the next generation. But popularity of belief is not necessarily validity.

Another parallel that comes to mind is creationism. That too is an easy answer to a complex question, and lots of people, uncomfortable with the idea of descent from apes (ego issues?) uncomfortable with questioning biblical authority (intellectual insecurity?), latch on to it with fervent belief even when the evidence points the other way.

Drug abuse prevalence and the death penalty
Country
Year of data
Drug abuse prevalence rate
Death penalty in law
Death penalty in practice
Russia
2001
2.1%
Yes
No
UK
2001
0.9%
No
No
USA
2000
0.6%
Yes
Yes
Thailand
2001
0.5%
Yes
Yes
New Zealand
2001
0.5%
No
No
Australia
2004
0.5%
No
No
France
1999
0.4%
No
No
Canada
2000
0.4%
No
No
Germany
2000
0.3%
No
No
Netherlands
2001
0.3%
No
No
Taiwan
2002
0.3%
Yes
Yes
Malaysia
2000
0.2%
Yes
Yes
China
2003
0.2%
Yes
Yes
Hong Kong
2002
0.2%
No
No
Mexico
2001
0.1%
No
No
Singapore
2002
0.1%
Yes
Yes
Japan
2002
0.1%
Yes
Yes (see yellow box)
Sweden
1998
0.1%
No
No
Finland
1999
0.1%
No
No




While Japan has the death penalty, we should note that only for murder is it mandatory. It is court-discretionary for 16 other crimes, though I have not been able to find out if drug possession or drug trafficking is one of them.

In practice, the death sentence in the last 10 years have only been imposed for murder-related crimes, hence, for the purposes of any discussion abut the death penalty as deterrence for drug abuse and trafficking, Japan is also a "No death penalty" country.

The data for drug abuse prevalence rates are taken from the website of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The numbers are estimates of the percentage of a country's population, aged 15 – 64, who are hooked on opiate drugs (which includes heroin).
The columns on the right relating to the death penalty are from Amnesty International's website.
Singapore indeed has a low rate of drug abuse. Only about 0.1 percent of our population are considered to have so succumbed. But this is also the case for Finland, Sweden and Mexico. Yet these countries do not need the death penalty to enjoy the same low rates of drug abuse.
Hong Kong, a city much like Singapore also has a rather low rate: 0.2 percent of its population. In 2004, it reported about 14,000 drug cases, whereas Singapore had something slightly under 3,500 cases per annum for the last few years.

It may look as if Hong Kong has 4 times as many drug addicts as Singapore, but then Hong Kong has twice our population. Thus its prevalence rate is only twice ours. Hong Kong does not have the death penalty.

By the way, unlike the Hong Kong government, which publishes its up-to-date numbers openly on the internet, Singapore's data seems to stop at 2002. One wonders why.
Japan too has a 0.1 percent prevalence rate, and it does have the death penalty. However, as the yellow box explains, in practice it is only used for murder. Thus, in considering drug abuse or trafficking, Japan is actually a "no death penalty" country.

In any case, Japan only executes about 2 or 3 persons a year. The Singapore government is very coy about our own figures, but it did reveal in Parliament that we executed 340 persons between 1991 and 2000. Considering our small population, it is believed that Singapore has the highest per capita execution rate in the world!

Coming back to the point, let's look at the countries in the table with the death penalty.
Malaysia, like Singapore, makes hanging a mandatory sentence for trafficking in 15 grams or more of heroin or heroin-equivalent, and it carries out these sentences too. But from the table, you see it has a drug abuse prevalence rate of 0.2 percent, not quite different from Hong Kong.
For a feel of the real numbers of individuals, see this news story by the Associated Press, dated 2 June 2005. AP reported that in Malaysia,

Government statistics indicate there are 300,000 drug addicts, though activists have said the real figure is much higher since many addicts have eluded arrest.

This was actually a side bit of information. The main point of the story was how Malaysia was so alarmed by the situation and the high risk of spreading HIV through injecting drugs, a proposal to give out free syringes was being floated. Has the death penalty worked for them?
Thailand too has the death penalty for drug trafficking. UNODC reports that it has a drug abuse prevalence rate of 0.5 percent. A story in the newspaper, The Nation, dated 29 Nov 2001 said,
Thailand has almost 2.6 million drug abusers aged five to 68, including 2.4 million methamphetamine users, according to an official health survey.

This survey was conducted between June and September 2001 by 20,000 health officials, who visited all 70,000 villages in the country. It was the most intensive study of the drug problem undertaken to date.

What does all this show? It shows that Singapore is doing something right, in order that we enjoy a relatively drug-free environment, but the "something" is unlikely to be the death penalty. We're just grasping at it as an easy explanation, and because as a society we're great believers in being punitive, sometimes even to the point of brutal.

As Finland, Sweden and Japan show, it is possible to be as drug-free a society as we are today without the death penalty.

Even when we are doing something right, we don't even know (or want to know) what it is!
It bothers me how as a society that hopes to be a knowledge economy and a centre for research, we have this lazy habit of mind to rely on easy explanations when the evidence suggests otherwise. It worries me how we cling to dogma, just like the creationists do.

Are we killing people because it deters others or because we simply want to get them out of the way? Do we rely on the easy explanation because we have proof it works, or because we wish to avoid having to grapple with the uncertainties of truth and conscience?
© Yawning Bread