AMNESTY International’s campaign to have capital punishment abolished in Jamaica was questioned at a public meeting put on by the local branch of the human rights organisation at Stephanie Hall in Half-Way-Tree on Tuesday evening.

“For those who are urging the abolition of the death penalty, Jamaica has not had executions for 14 years and every year the murder rate escalates,” an attorney, Norman Wright, argued at the meeting where panellists discussed the topic: ‘The Death Penalty and the Protection of Human Rights’.

Wright, who said that Jamaica had 1,169 murders last year and so far this year we are ahead of that figure, argued that the death penalty in other countries may not have made a difference, but its absence in Jamaica had resulted in an escalating murder rate.

Sister Helen Prejean, a human rights activist from the United States and author of Dead Man Walking, said that a high percentage of murders in Jamaica went unsolved. She said that the investigative arm of the state needed to be beefed up and the persons committing the murders arrested.

“To go for the death penalty is the extreme solution… It is not going to prevent crime. We have to talk about how do we prevent violence. Every society has got to ask what prevents crime, how do we stop the murders?” Prejean said, adding that murders and other crimes had to be linked to the social conditions and the problems that exist in Jamaica.

“You have to start looking at how the police are trained; Who are the police? How are they selected? What is their relationship with the community? What is the economic situation in neighbourhoods? Do people have jobs? Do they have hope? Do they have education? Why are people killing each other? In the US we need to ask those questions too,” Prejean noted.

Attorney Dennis Daley disagreed with Wright that no executions had taken place here over the last 14 years.

“The fact is, we have had executions. Over 2,000 people in those 14 years have been executed by the police and I estimate that at least two-thirds of them have been unjustified murders,” Daley said.

Peter Espeut, who served as moderator, reminded the audience that the politicians had passed laws exempting persons convicted of political murders from the death penalty. He said that the politicians had “set it up” so that political murderers were able to succeed without fear of the death penalty.

“We began this year with the horrendous 100 Lane murders on Red Hills Road, which had their root in politics, with persons from one party being alleged to have killed a number of persons from the other party. None of those persons could be punished by the death penalty,” he said.

Another member of the audience said that people did not see the death penalty as a deterrent to crime but wanted revenge.

Another citizen asked whether any study had been done on the cost of keeping murder convicts in prison. “A 20 year-old that has been convicted, if imprisoned, he could live for 80 years,” she said.

She also said that in Jamaica, men on death row have stayed in prison and planned murders on the outside.