Wait. Hang who?

Two weeks ago, Charmaine Rattray and her daughter, Joeith Lynch, were brutally murdered in their home in Lauriston, a community just outside Spanish Town. To call these killings horrific is an understatement of epic proportions. In a country accustomed to brutality in all its forms, this particular double-murder has shocked our collective conscience. The 40-year-old mother and her 19-year-old daughter were not simply killed - they were beheaded.

Days earlier, 19-year-old Scott Thomas, a reputed member of the notorious Clansman Gang, was also decapitated in the same community. Thirty-seven-year-old Gary Smith of August Town met a similar fate days later. This repugnant disregard for human dignity resembles that more commonly observed in Pakistan or Iraq or in the worst instances of Mexico's drug wars; not in Jamaica.

Resume hanging

The Prime Minister, in expressing his shock at the reprehensible killings, suggested that we reconsider resuming hanging to "send a signal that this society is not going to put up with that barbarity." The public seems to agree. The cry is clear and unmistakable: hang them!

But, hang who?

We need to actually catch and convict murderers before we can hang them. This is no easy task given our historic dysfunction in this area. In 2005, for instance, only 36 per cent of murder investigations resulted in a case being referred to the Crown for prosecution. Even so, many of these cases fall apart when witnesses fail to cooperate due to interference and intimidation.

If we are to even consider resuming hanging, we must first overhaul our broken criminal justice system - with its delays and discriminatory practices - in a way that provides for efficient and reliable arrest, charging, prosecution and conviction of suspected killers. This is an absolute prerequisite for resuming hanging. Even so, a healthy, functioning system in itself would be a far more effective solution to violent crime than would hanging.

Little regard for life

These killers have little regard for life - not even their own. Many face perpetual threats of death - from rival gang members, their own cronies, and law enforcement. One of the suspects in the recent beheadings was, reportedly, killed by police last week. This swift and reasonably foreseeable death sentence was no more a deterrent to him than hanging would have been.

A study conducted during the United States crack-cocaine wars of the 1980s found that the death rate of gang members on the streets of Chicago was seven per cent per person per year. In comparison, the death rate of death-row inmates at that time, from all causes including execution, was two per cent per person per year. In other words, gang members on the streets were far more likely to die than were convicted killers sentenced to death.

It is clear, then, that the fear of death does not influence the behaviour of these delinquents. Indeed, the opposite may be true. A real possibility of a life locked in a tiny cell could be a much stronger deterrent for men whose souls have grown unfazed by death and whose lives have been characterised by resistance to and disdain for authority.

Hanging is but a simplistic solution designed more for revenge than deterrence. Our homicide problem is a complex one requiring complex solutions like mending the criminal justice system, severing the ties between government institutions and the criminal underworld, educating and empowering the masses, and creating an environment for economic growth that provides young men with options other than kill or be killed.

The anger that rages within those affected by these gruesome killings is understandable. Families will go to bed tonight accompanied not by sweet dreams of their loved ones, but by nightmares of their gory slayings. Society is again forced to cower in fear of the vile and brutal monster lurking in unknown corners. It is natural, then, that we have been overpowered by the pangs for vengeance erupting within our guts.

This is where level-headed leadership is needed to direct us away from our most primitive, animalistic instincts and towards effective solutions for a perplexing problem. "Violence begets violence, hate begets hate." "Put up again thy sword into its place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Hang them! And then what?

Din Duggan is an attorney working as a consultant with a global legal search firm. Email him at columns@gleanerjm.com or dinduggan@gmail.com or view his past columns at facebook.com/dinduggan and twitter.com/YoungDuggan.