Civil and Criminal Penalties

1. There are several kinds of punishment available to the courts. In civil cases, the most common punishment is a fine, but specific performance and injunctions may also be ordered. For criminal offences fines are also often used when the offence is not a very serious one and when the offender has not been in trouble before. Another kind of punishment available in some countries is community service. This requires the offender to do a certain amount of unpaid work, usually for a social institution such as a hospital. For more serious crimes the usual punishment is imprisonment. Some prison sentences are suspended: the offender is not sent to prison if he keeps out of trouble for a fixed period of time, but if he does offend again both the suspended sentence and any new one will be imposed. The length of sentences varies from a few days to a lifetime. However, a life sentence may allow the prisoner to be released after a suitably long period if a review (parole) board agrees his detention no longer serves a purpose. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, living conditions in prison are fairly good because it is felt that deprivation of liberty is punishment in itself and should not be so harsh that it reduces the possibility of the criminal re-educating and reforming himself. In other countries, conditions are very bad. Perhaps because of an increase in crime or because of more and longer sentences of imprisonment, some prison cells have to accommodate far more people than they were built to hold and the prisoners are only let out of their cells once a day. Britain and the United States are trying to solve the shortage of space by allowing private companies to open prisons.

2. In some countries there is also corporal punishment (physical). In Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, among others, courts may sentence offenders to be caned or whipped. In Saudi Arabia theft and possession of alcohol may be punished by cutting off the offender’s hand or foot.

3. The ultimate penalty is death (capital punishment). It is carried out by hanging (Kenya, for example); electrocution, gassing or lethal injection (U.S.); beheading or stoning (Saudi Arabia); or shooting (China). Although most countries still have a death penalty, 35 (including almost every European nation) have abolished it; 18 retain it only for exceptional crimes such as wartime offences; and 27 no longer carry out executions even when a death sentence has been passed. In other words, almost half the countries of the world have ceased to use the death penalty. The UN has declared itself in favour of abolition, Amnesty International actively campaigns for abolition, and the issue is now the focus of great debate.

4. Supporters of capital punishment believe that death is a just punishment for certain serious crimes. Many also believe that it deters others from committing such crimes. Opponents argue that execution is cruel and uncivilized. Capital punishment involves not only the pain of dying (James Autry took ten minutes to die of lethal injection in Texas, 1984) but also the mental anguish of waiting, sometimes for years, to know if and when the sentence will be carried out. Opponents also argue that there is no evidence that it deters people from committing murder any more than imprisonment does. A further argument is that, should a mistake be made, it is too late to rectify it once the execution has taken place. In 1987, two academics published a study showing that 23 innocent people had been executed in the United States. Research has shown that capital punishment is used inconsistently. For example, in South Africa, black murderers are far more likely to be sentenced to death than whites. During a crime wave in China in the 1980s, cities were given a quota of executions to meet; in a city where there weren't very many murders, people convicted of lesser crimes were more likely to be executed. In addition, while in some countries young people are not sent to prison but to special juvenile detention centres, in Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Barbados and the United States children under 18 have been legally put to death.

5. As the debate about capital punishment continues, the phenomenon of death row (people sentenced but still alive) increases. In 1991, no one was executed in Japan, but three people were sentenced to death, bringing the total number on death row to fifty. Sakae Menda lived under sentence of death for thirty three years before obtaining a retrial and being found not guilty. The debate also involves the question of what punishment is for. Is the main aim to deter? This was certainly the case in 18th century England when the penalty for theft was supposed to frighten people from stealing and compensate for inabilities to detect and catch thieves. Is it revenge or retribution? Is it to keep criminals out of society? 0r is it to reform and rehabilitate them?

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