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The Jolly Hangman, the Jailed Journalist, and the Decline of Singapore’s Death Penalty

The Jolly Hangman, the Jailed Journalist, and the Decline of Singapore’s Death Penalty British journalist Alan Shadrake was convicted of contempt of court in 2010 for writing a book about capital punishment in Singapore. This article uses that book and other sources to analyze four aspects of Singapore’s death penalty. It begins with a profile of Darshan Singh, the hangman who executed 1,000 persons over the past half-century. The article then shows that Singapore’s system of mandatory capital punishment does not produce consistency in death penalty decision-making. Next the article argues that the prosecution of Shadrake increased criticism of capital punishment in Singapore by propelling his book to bestseller status. This is followed by an explanation of why the number of persons executed in Singapore has declined in recent years, from an average of 66 per year in the mid-1990s to an average of 5 per year since 2004. The key proximate cause of this decline appears to be prosecutors, who can use their discretion to charge defendants for possessing amounts of heroin, cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine that are just under the thresholds for a mandatory death sentence. Capital punishment in Singapore is not really mandatory, and it cannot escape the problems of bias and arbitrariness that have long plagued discretionary death penalty systems in the United States, Japan, and other nations. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Asian Journal of Criminology Springer Journals

The Jolly Hangman, the Jailed Journalist, and the Decline of Singapore’s Death Penalty

Johnson, David
Asian Journal of Criminology , Volume 8 (1) – May 27, 2012
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19 pages

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Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Subject
Social Sciences, general; Criminology & Criminal Justice; Social Sciences, general; Political Science, general; Law, general
ISSN
1871-0131
eISSN
1871-014X
DOI
10.1007/s11417-012-9143-1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

British journalist Alan Shadrake was convicted of contempt of court in 2010 for writing a book about capital punishment in Singapore. This article uses that book and other sources to analyze four aspects of Singapore’s death penalty. It begins with a profile of Darshan Singh, the hangman who executed 1,000 persons over the past half-century. The article then shows that Singapore’s system of mandatory capital punishment does not produce consistency in death penalty decision-making. Next the article argues that the prosecution of Shadrake increased criticism of capital punishment in Singapore by propelling his book to bestseller status. This is followed by an explanation of why the number of persons executed in Singapore has declined in recent years, from an average of 66 per year in the mid-1990s to an average of 5 per year since 2004. The key proximate cause of this decline appears to be prosecutors, who can use their discretion to charge defendants for possessing amounts of heroin, cannabis, cocaine, and methamphetamine that are just under the thresholds for a mandatory death sentence. Capital punishment in Singapore is not really mandatory, and it cannot escape the problems of bias and arbitrariness that have long plagued discretionary death penalty systems in the United States, Japan, and other nations.

Journal

Asian Journal of Criminology – Springer Journals

Published: May 27, 2012

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