Death penalty not only option

WAIT for a serious law and order crisis and PNG government ministers and bureaucrats will quickly declare that the death penalty will soon be implemented.
Those on death row will be executed.
The only issue is on how to do it.
The most refined methods internationally accepted are the electric chair and the lethal injection.
Proper standard procedures, however, are costly and require a high level of professionalism.
Add to it the fact that, for the PNG tribes, death calls for new deaths, and you have the perfect cocktail for failure and further confusion.
Deterrence is also a weak argument, since heinous crimes and killings come about because of ancestral beliefs and practices, or under the influence of substances, or following outbursts of anger and loss of self-control in situations in which the thought of a possible death sentence does not even come to mind.
Rather than evoking the death penalty to give people the impression that the leadership is active against crime, concrete action should rather be taken.
Attempts at improving the police force are ongoing, and the media are encouraged to campaign against all sort of violence.
But there is a need for a long-term plan at improving key sectors of society with education at the core of it.
How can you really defeat sorcery accusations, gender-based violence, and settlement culture of survival and petty crime easily descending into murder?
Only through education, and a new moral fiber deriving from the best of the ancestral cultural traditions (such as communality), from the civic responsibility inspired by the common good and the rule of law, from the religious values of love for people and God.
To instill such a new and reinforced spirit into society is harder work than executing a few rogue individuals on death row.
But it is worth trying.
Even if the goal is only partially achieved, the efforts will leave tangible improvements.
The execution of a few inmates will not. It will only create a superficial impression of government firmness and determination with no real impact on personal and social behaviour.

Fr Giorgio Licini, PIME
Catholic Bishops Conference PNG/SI