Globally, 55 countries, including Taiwan, still retain capital punishment today. Actually, the execution of notorious criminals can be found in almost all societies since the beginning of human civilization. However, with the universal awareness of human rights and changing perceptions towards judicial system, capital punishment, which was firstly established in official law in the 18th century, gradually becomes a hot issue among every society in the last few decades. The controversy relating to human right, political power struggle and transitional justice brought by capital punishment is fiercely discussed in many countries worldwide. In Taiwan, we do not exclude this social topic. There are many intense debates, and both pro party and con party have their advocates who have not yet reached the consensus on this issue. Although some may assert that capital punishment is uncivil, capital punishment still holds its reasons to be kept mainly for its fundamental function of guaranteeing fairness and justice and for Taiwanese people’s public opinion.
Firstly, capital punishment highly represents the retributive justice and it surely can serve as a mean to demonstrate the fairness and justice to not only the victims and their families but the whole society. The core spirit of retributive justice, a theory in criminology, is to let the offenders undergo some kind of sufferings in return for their violations to the laws. The great German philosophers Hegel and Kant are two famous advocates for retributive justice. As stated in Hegel’s work, if a person negates the law, then the country has the authority to impose corresponding punishments on him/her to negate the offender in order to manifest the correctness of the law. By giving the comparable sufferings experienced by the victims to the offenders, our judicial system confirms its credibility and further stabilizes people’s confidence towards the system. Therefore, it is necessary to retain capital punishment so that it can achieve fairness and justice.
Secondly, death penalty in Taiwan holds the support from the majority. According to a poll number released in 2014 from a telephone survey conducted by the Department of Criminology in National Chung-Cheng University, 79.7% of Taiwanese people expressed their support to death penalty. What’s more, the percentage number of supporting is always higher than 70% every year between 2007 to 2014, with 91.7% in 2013 as the peak. Also, a result of telephone survey conducted by National Development Council in 2016 shows that near 88% of Taiwanese people declared their opposition towards the abolishment of death penalty. Since Taiwan is a democratic country, a system having the approval from the majority should undoubtedly be retained. If we put an end to capital punishment, it was obviously an act that violates and ignores the opinion of people.
Nevertheless, some may argue that capital punishment should be terminated for it has lost its original function and gradually becomes a tool manipulated by politicians. Considering capital punishment always provides the most eye-catching headline, the ruling party may successfully shift people’s focus from certain issues that it wants to avoid. Another accusation is that capital punishment has turned into a tactic to win elections, for this punishment holds the majority’s backing in Taiwan. While these concerns may be true, they still cannot be the sufficient reasons to abandon capital punishment. After all, we do not hold concrete evidence to accuse any politician for manipulating death penalty for any political purpose. Also, it is entirely irrational to decide the judicial policy of our country only depending on particular people’s behavior.
What’s more, some people suggest that Taiwan should reconsider the conservation of capital punishment because many human right organizations and highly developed countries such as members in EU all hold a position strongly against capital punishment. For opponents of capital punishment, the abolishment of it to some extent represents the development level and human right awareness of a country, and they think that transitional justice, which refers to how countries address the large-scale human right violations, can be an important alternative for capital punishment. From the aspect of development level, the fact is that many countries retaining capital punishment are recognized by Human Development Index as “very highly developed” in the issue released in 2019. These countries including Japan, USA and Taiwan are listed on the chart. Therefore, the development level is not a persuasive reason to abandon capital punishment. On the other hand, Taiwan has not come up with a fully developed system for transitional justice; therefore, it is too rush to consider the replacement of capital punishment before we have a perfect transitional justice system.
To sum up, there is no one-size-fits-all policy. Taiwan should legislate our policy according to our own social condition rather than those of other countries. Though concerns related to political power and values of human rights may be some of the reasons to abolish capital punishment, we should still retain capital punishment based on its function of providing fairness and justice, the support from the majority, as well as the condition of our existing justice system.
Reference
Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme
(2019). Human development reports. Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/2019-human-development-index-ranking
國立中正大學犯罪研究中心 (2013)。Retrieved from
http://deptcrc.ccu.edu.tw/index.php/examine/showExamine/46
國家發展委員會 (2016)。八成八民眾不贊成廢除死刑。Retrieved from