Death Penalty: Evidence & Alternatives

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte recently certified as urgent the passage of death penalty bill. In his State of the Nation Address, he urged legislators to re-impose death penalty specifically for drug offenses. The House of Representatives immediately took the call and started entertaining old proposals to revive the death penalty law.

The call for death penalty came at a time when the Filipino nation is reeling from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of Filipinos had been added to the ranks of the unemployed and the economy has contracted by almost 20 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness is expected to increase. With the lack of basic necessities like food, shelter and clothing, individuals and families may cope by engaging in unconventional, if not criminal behaviors, such as stealing properties or selling drugs. It is in anticipation of the impending crime wave that the imposition of death penalty is sought after.

For the unsuspecting and the uncritical, this may sound as a logical proposition. Death penalty is an extreme form of punishment, meant to deter individuals and the general population from committing a crime. By putting drug dealers and users to the death row, the logic assumes, the general population will refrain from selling and using drugs. By making examples of the drug dealers and users, other crimes, such as robbery, murder, and rape, will also go down.

The best way to evaluate this proposition is to examine the evidence. Does the death penalty for drug offenses truly reduce drug proliferation in the country? Do taxi drivers, kargadores, and community residents truly change their ways? Do crimes related to drug use, such as stealing and shoplifting to support a drug habit, been truly eradicated?

Since 2016, with the advent of the drug war, the government had informally introduced the death penalty through the Extra Judicial Killings (EJK). There are now close to 6,000 Filipinos who died in police anti-drug operations for allegedly trying to engage the police in a shoot out, or what is now commonly called as “nanlaban.” Another 30,000 plus Filipinos died in the hands of vigilantes and death squads. The manner of their deaths is even gorier—the body of the drug suspects are mutilated, decapitated and covered with masking tapes, purportedly to warn other drug dealers and users of the same fate. Though carried out informally, EJKs served as a death penalty meant to scare and deter people from committing crimes.

Given the massive implementation of this informal death penalty, we should expect that the number of drug dealers and drug users to go down. We should have also seen the number of other drug related property and violent crimes (raped by an addict) plummeting. Unfortunately, the lack of reliable and scientific data precludes us from providing a definitive answer to these questions. Limited data from jail facilities, however, do indicate that while drug-related cases increased, the number of other non-drug cases remained the same, suggesting, it is not a deterrence to other crimes. Additionally, the number of drug offenders who were caught, released from jail, and caught again remained the same—at around 40 percent of the population. Thus, the recidivism rate, a measure of behavioral change, is still the same. People who used drugs are still likely to use drugs upon release.

Intimate interviews among drug users who are under detention reveal that the threat of a punitive penalty, even death, does not deter them from dealing and selling drugs. Many drug users, for example, use drugs not because they sustain a habit, but because they use it for work. Taxi drivers, car repair mechanics, sampaguita sellers, market vendors, kargadores, and even call center workers use drugs to keep them awake all night. It is necessary for their work. Drug dealers, on the other hand, say they continue to sell drugs since it is readily available anyway-- to pass on the opportunity will simply mean others will take the opportunity. Indeed, as long as international drug trade is successful in flooding the streets with drugs, low-level drug dealers will continue to partake in the profits to be made.

Thus, drug dealing and using is a complicated social, economic and cultural reality that can not be simply stamped out by imposing the death penalty, either of the informal variety or of the proposal to make it part of the laws of the land. The drug problem is best approached as a public health issue that needs to address the root cause of drug offending— the strains of poverty, the stresses of work, the lack alternative recreations, the diminished mental conditions, etc. It is best addressed by investing in families, schools and communities—pouring money to education, health and social welfare. Instead of putting more money to needlessly arrest and incarcerate people, we can strengthen our schools, hospitals, parks and other social agencies. In the United States, this is called justice reinvestment.

Finally, we must be cognizant of “who” will implement the formal death penalty. Given the context of material and financial imbalance in Philippine society, and where the criminal justice system is part of the business enterprise, it will be the poor and uneducated Filipinos who cannot pay for good lawyers who will carry the brunt of the law. There also is a categorical need for training and education among police officers, prosecutors and judges for them to become professionals so they can balance the need for public safety and compassion to the plight of our Fellow Filipinos. Without which, the death penalty becomes the tool to protect the elites from the notion of rampaging crime and to continually oppress and find fault to the poor and powerless.

Opinyon.net August 7, 2020