oh, how depressing this is . . .

[realthog]

Jamaica votes for death penalty
 

Jamaica's parliament has voted to keep the death penalty, as the Caribbean nation struggles to contain one of the world's highest murder rates.

MPs were allowed a free vote, rather than having to vote along party lines.

Jamaica has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1988 but the governing Jamaica Labour Party, elected last year, has pushed for its return.

The Beeb has a fuller story here.

Of course, this means that any plans this particular cricket fan might have had to go visit Jamaica have just gone down the tubes. But presumably the numbskulls who thought, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that state-sanctioned murder is the way to bring the crime rate down are also so economically dimwitted that they really don't give a fuck about the hit the Jamaican tourist industry might take.

Of course, a high murder rate doesn't help the tourist industry either; I can recognize that. But for me -- and there must be lots of others like me -- state-sanctioned murder has a unique repulsiveness that somehow puts it beyond most other murders. I've just been to Philadelphia, a city with a remarkably high crime rate, and I didn't even think about that. If there'd been an "execution" (that useful euphemism) going on in Philly at the time, I'd definitely have been repelled.

Perhaps the Jamaican parliamentarians responsible for this regressive step think it'll be worth a few human lives to give themselves some political advantage? Of course, they'll tell you that only the heinous will be sacrificed; what truly crass hypocrisy, since it's blatant that every judicial system in the world convicts the innocent on a depressingly regular basis.

If you really want a proven method of getting the crime rate down, tackle poverty. It's been proven effective time after time after time throughout history. Of course, tackling poverty requires a certain amount of political courage and a degree of disruption of the average politician's ultra-comfortable life -- oh, only give me the time to stir my martini to perfection! -- so just killing people is a whole lot simpler and less time-consuming.

(And, before you ask, because of the US's barbaric killing practices I'd surely not have emigrated to this country unless . . . well, guess I love Pam even more than I love cricket.)