The execution of humans for the commitment of specific crimes as a way of punishment is a sentence received after an appropriate judgment in front of the law. This is known as Capital Punishment, and is generally used as a penalty for specifics and severe murder.
Capital punishment is considered in some country as proper penalty for other different crimes like types of fraud, adultery and rape. All of these are consider capital crimes. Capital punishment is used in many countries around the world; although, that capital punishment is a traditional way of penalization in many countries.According to Amnesty International (2012), 141 countries have abolished the death penalty either in law on in practice. There is one big controversy about restoring the capital punishment between the people and the government. Capital Punishment as we see, was a measure of penalty for real serious offences, and in the UK was began to consider more kind of crimes.
Many diver numbers of the crimes that will be consider punishing with the death penalty in the UK have a rough increase in the years around 1660 from about 50, by the year of 1750 was around 160.Finally, at 1815 was the century where the highest number took place with a 288 crimes. It was not till the 18th century, the United Kingdom witnessing a dramatic swell in capital punishment. Although there were more offences and crimes that were meant to be punish by death, the crime did not increase as itself, It was because off the offences that could be punish by death continue increasing, and more crimes were established to be punish under the capital punishment rules.By 1770 year, the first steps to the downfall of the death penalty were demonstrated.
This movement starts by the suggestion of Sir William Meredith to the Parliament; he asks to be considering the introduction of more rational penalties. Even though this proposal was decline by the parliament, began a series of event that eventually entailed to a movement for the capital punishment abolition. Two hundred years later, under the labour government of Harold Wilson in 1964 and his first home ecretary Sir Frank Soskice, death penalty was regard as the main controversy to be solved. For this reason for the date of 28th of October 1965, the death penalty act was suspended for a period of time of five years, in the wake of a legal proposal sponsored by the left wing MP Mr.
Sydney Silverman, who received a Royal penalty supported by the government and secretary’s home by his proposal.The last woman to be executed in Britain in the twenty century was a girl named Ruth Ellis; she was the 18th women that received a death penalty, for this reason this punishment became flagrant in England. Ruth was hanged at London's Holloway Prison at the time of 13th of July 1955, she was accused for killing her lover as the BBC News (2012c) report: “Ellis was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for shooting her lover, 25-year-old racing driver David Blakely, outside the Magdala public house in north London on Easter Sunday”.Although Ruth Ellis was accused of the murder of David Blakely (her lover), a lot of people try to defend her.
Many petitions were signed for hundreds and hundreds of people, including 35 of London County Council to request one exception in the execution for this lady. Finally after this event, on the date of 16th of December 1969, the House of Commons reaffirmed its decision that capital punishment for murder should be permanently abolished. At this time the main query to be discussed is “Does the UK Want the Capital Punishment Back? . Nowadays the citizens from United Kingdom have many different thoughts about the death penalty, in fact people can think different from the government. In Rebecca Cafe (2011) reportage to the BBC News, we found that she said, “An internet campaign has reignited the debate on whether the UK government should seek the reintroduction of the death penalty.
”(Cafe 2011). Also we find an article about Paul Staines who is an English-born Irish right-wing political blogger; he wants the capital penalty to be reintroduced.In the article he establish that “in his opinion, the English population would reinstate the capital punishment “for child and police officer murders”. He requires 100,000 people to introduce his petition before the Parliament will talk about it.
In 2010 YOUGOV quotes the last opinion pool: the 51% of the population think that it has to be reintroducing. The 62% of this part of citizens want it only for the child murder, the majority (72%) of the people requires it for some circumstance, and finally the only 16% want it for all types of murders.Anthony Wells, associate director of YOUGOV, was ask if he agree with the statement of the death penalty are straightforward: "Do you support it or not? ", he argue that “Historically opinion polls on capital punishment have been commissioned by newspapers when there has been a heinous crime such as after the Soham murders”. Even though all this arguments, the Government maintain a strong position in this controversy. The government refuse to bring the capital punishment again to their system.
In conclusion, this controversy arise a debate between Paul Staines and Paul Flynn who is a British labour party Politician. Mr. Staines said that “The majority are in favour for bringing back the death penalty everywhere expected in Parliament. What I’m trying to do is get Parliament to discuss this issue between what Parliament wants and what the people want”. In the other hand, Flynn doesn’t agree with his opinion and he replicates that “if the public opinion is wrong you don’t have to follow it”. There is a main reason to not be reintroduced the capital punishment in the UK.
United Kingdom as a European territory decided to be part of the European Union in 1973, which means that they must remain under the margins of the policies of this organization. An irrevocable posture against the death penalty is taken by the European Union, this organization looks after for the human rights as a priority. To agree with this statement is an indispensable condition to be part of this union. In fact, in the latest news of the European Union is proclaimed that “The EU is the leading institutional actor and largest donor to the fight against the death penalty.This commitment is outlined clearly in the European Union Guidelines on the death penalty, the first ever human rights guidelines adopted by Council, in 1998”.
In conclusion United Kingdom as being part of this Union, needed to be agree with this policy of the abolition of the capital punishment to be a member of the European Union, as soon as they became one of them they had to commit with the European Union laws, indeed, the only way they can be available to bring back the capital punishment regimen is to not be often a European Union members
