LEGAL luminary Frank Phipps QC, said while he understood that drastic measures are needed to stem the country’s horrific crime rate, he does not support the death penalty.

He said instead that life in prison is punishment enough and the cost to taxpayers to house prisoners could be significantly reduced if penal authorities made sure prisoners pay for their own keep.

“I am against the death penalty, but I can understand in the situation we are in Jamaica today; it wouldn’t take much to convince me that a lot of these wrongdoers should be executed,” Phipps told reporters and editors at the Observer’s weekly Monday Exchange. “But I still feel that it is something that should not be on the books.”

Phipps said imprisonment, especially in Jamaica’s penal facilities, was sometimes worse than death.

“That is punishment that will last for the rest of your natural life. On the other hand, you are just bringing forward something that is inevitable when you execute,” Phipps said.

Prison officials last year revealed that it costs taxpayers about $770,000 to accommodate an inmate annually.

But Phipps said the cost could be significantly reduced if penal authorities made sure prisoners pay for their own keep when they are in custody and ease the burden faced by already strained taxpayers.

“It’s because the arrangements are not clear. You see all those arid lands in parts of Jamaica? I would put them there. I would not even put a wall, I would put up a chain link fence with some guards and say if you want to eat you are going to have to plant. If you want to drink water, then catch it when rain falls,” Phipps said, adding that the prisoners would also have the option of selling the surplus food they plant.

Phipps also expressed support for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for persons found guilty of heinous crimes.

“I would support it under humane circumstances,” he said.

In November 2008 Jamaican lawmakers voted 34-15 in favour of resuming executions. But even though the Senate also voted in favour and the majority of Jamaicans support the measure, no executions have been carried out despite campaign promises by the ruling Jamaica Labour Party in the months before the general elections in 2007.

In its report entitled Death Sentences and Executions in 2009, human rights group Amnesty International yesterday reported that 714 people were executed in 18 countries and at least 2,001 people were sentenced to death in 56 countries last year.

The group named China as the worst offending state.

“Amnesty International’s research shows that countries that still carry out executions are the exception rather than the rule. In addition to China, the worst offending nations were Iran with at least 388 executions, Iraq at least 120, Saudi Arabia at least 69 and the USA with 52,” Amnesty stated.

The methods used included hanging, shooting, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection.

In January, Lennox Swaby and Calvin Powell, two men convicted for the brutal murder of elderly Mandeville couple Richard and Julia Lyn in December 2006, were sentenced the death in the High Court.

Massinissa Adams, Kemar Dawkins and Rohan Townsend were in October last year also sentenced to death for the gun murder of Assistant Commissioner of Police Gilbert Kameka.

Kameka was killed in the rustic district of Irish Town, St Andrew in November 2007.

The five join at least 10 other men who are now awaiting their fate with the executioner.

Women are not executed under Jamaican law.

The last execution to be carried out in Jamaica was in February 1988.