Ruth Ellis: Spectator article from 1955

In the recent capital punishment debate; Mr. Lloyd-George stated that one of the reasons for the retention of hanging was that long prison sentences were detrimental to the health of prisoners...

Hmmm

The Ellis and Evans cases were pretty much what
made me hate capital punishment. Despite some horrific
murderers since like Sutcliffe I am still against it.

For it is very probable that capital punishment actually leads to more people being murdered. As Christopher Hollis argued in the Spectator last week, the publicity that is given to the murderer in the dock, the mystique that surrounds hanging, is, likely to push the psychopath just over the border of sanity into murder. But it is enough to point out how infinitely more healthy our society would become if it were no longer able to read about the ordeal of people waiting execution, or to gaze at photographs of the families of condemned men visiting the prison, or photographs of the public hangman having a day at the races.


And this....

Imagine now he was writing about terrorists and the publicity they recieve

One day we will get it right...

They were getting Dropped daily back in the day Donnie , there was not too much Mystique involved

no civilised country has it except the usa. even russia doesn't have it

Of the major western countries, the one with the highest murder rate is the one that has capital punishment as a so-called deterrent.

and the states with the lowest murder rates don't have the death penalty

I expect they have more guns than any other, that might possibly affect the comparison?
States with and without CP might be a better way to look at it.

Overlap, thanks.

Mar 13, 2025 -- 4:17PM, A_T wrote:

and the states with the lowest murder rates don't have the death penalty

Japan has close to the lowest murder rate in the world.

us states

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y9x6zrkrro

46 years on death row in japan and then they realised he was innocent.

He is unusual. They normally just bump them off with a few hours notice I think.