Singapore to execute woman on drugs charge for the first time in 20 years
bbc.com
bbc.com
There are strongly held views on either side of this contentious debate but a refutation, if that's what it is, would settle the issue for most rational people. Since to refute is to disprove by argument, the existence of such a refutation would imply the Singaporean Authorities have circulated false data. I don't think the BBC believes that or is even implying it. They mean there is a vigorous debate.
https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/press-releases/findings-fro...
> Saridewi Djamani, who was charged with trafficking a total of 1kg of drugs containing 30.72g of pure heroin, also claimed she was suffering from persistent depressive disorder and severe substance use disorder.
It appears she might have had 1Kg of drugs but only 30g of heroin. It would be more interesting if the BBC does some real investigative work on whether different races in Singapore are treated differently by their justice system. The defendant here being racially Indian.
Arguing about whether the death penalty acts or not as a deterrent can distract from the primary point. If one believes the death penalty is wrong in principle, then that should be the central argument. Debating its effectiveness opens the door to counterarguments and can weaken the stance. I believe that the focus should be on the moral and ethical reasons against it.
My current feeling is that there is a limit we should be willing to spend, as a society, on someone who chooses to actively inflict harm on or enable harm to come to others. I struggle to see the humanity or benefit to society in sending someone to prison for the remainder of their natural life that satisfies either the condemned or the victim. Capital punishment has become significantly more expensive than life imprisonment, which may be one of the strongest arguments against it, imho.
Not often drugs specifically, but I can't say for sure never that either. In my 20's I had friends that spanned a full spectrum, and not all activities were organized and orderly. You go on a camping trip, or even just a night in someone's back yard, you come back with mystery items in your blanket/towel/bag/cooler/coat. I don't smoke and yet I somehow have been in posession of many lighters at different times.
If someone doesn't understand how that happens, I can only feel sorry that they have lived so little that they never lent a girl their coat at a party or provided the blanket that everyone else sat on etc. But then they end up in a position to decide what constitutes fair and reasonable expectations for everyone else.
A lot of people calling for the death of drug dealers assume that they themselves would be safe, but it doesn’t take much for the movement of state sponsored killing to become a lot more broad.
I don’t agree with the harsh punishments, though many western cities are being over taken by drugs, crime, and homelessness.
The current policies we have in places like LA and Seattle do not work, it’s plainly evident. Should we be more brutal in our punishments? Not necessarily. But we’ve tried this experiment since asylums were shut down decades ago, and it doesn’t seem to have produced the outcome expected.
Social safety net, mental health services, and other forms of dignity in civil society being some of them.
How safe or unsafe a place is has very little to do with the harshness of its laws and everything about the values of the people that leave there. Is there a general acceptance for law breaking? Is the law enforcement seen as corrupt? Are laws applied selectively? Are people seen as lawbreakers that "made it" seen as an example to aspire to? Is successfully "gaming the system" something one can use as a status symbol? Also, the level of poverty, how bad or good are the living conditions, access to (mental) healthcare. All these things are way more important that the harshness of penalties applied.
I have that now without the killings but whatever.
Not to mention leaving your laptop unattended is littering, and clean streets are also worth killing people. Or leaving your laptop unattended is being accomplice in cyber crime, and since they executed a guy for weed he never touched or was ever in posession of, guess you better never leave that laptoo on that table after all.
This entire argument is so gross and ugly it boggles any functioning mind.
Besides, the article is from the BBC, so there’s always going to be a slight British touch in the reporting.
Oh really? Then please explain why there are few death by drugs in such countries while there are hundreds of thousands of deaths due to overdose with opoids in the US as we speak where their use is completely decriminalized?
You don't get to say "X does not work to fix Y problem" without doing any kind of homework. Or then, make a statement that "death penalty is bad no matter what", but saying that it's not a deterrent is a very debatable question for drugs.
Does decriminalized mean something I'm not aware of? Do you mean that prescriptions are not criminalized? Use? Possession?
[0]: https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+ful+CHAP038...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12131455/Inside-Phi...
Study of ethics transcends culture.
Executing drug traffickers for Singapore, causes the amount of drug use to decrease and saves many more lives.
My main reservation is that, at least in the US, we've had a problem with executing people who may have been innocent.
thankfully Singapore doesn’t have this problem /s
https://www.home.org.sg/our-updates/2020/9/7/parti-liyani-an...
E.g., if we had a system where 1 unjust execution avoided 1 million being killed by drunk drivers, I'd chose the unjust execution. But if those numbers were reversed, I wouldn't.
But if I'm being honest, I can't justify why someone should prefer my ethical framework over some other. So I'm not sure my opinion means much in the end.
Human life should be considered precious, and not discarded with just to set an example of strength.
Judging life by western standards seems like a sensible thing to do if you come from the west.
> Judging life by western standards seems like a sensible thing to do if you come from the west.
Only if you have no awareness of your own surroundings and upbringing. Those of us with the opportunity to widen our worldview understand that applying one country's value system to another is comparing apples to oranges. The hubris in thinking that your country/culture's values apply to another population across the world is maddening and a big contributor to the anti-West sentiment around the world.
My child is probably more like her than I would want to believe. Both struggling mentally and needing help. Killing her means I'm okay with killing my own child because they shared with a friend.
That said I don't think moving 30 grams of Heroin is 'just sharing'. In Singapore, this kind of crime is the absolute worst of the worst, similar to and in some cases punished worse than murder.
Just important to think of how relatively serious these crimes are in other places. It's not like the US or Europe.
fascinating take here. granted a very empathic one, but also extremely naive
There's considerable variety in Westerners' beliefs.
Edit for more scale: there are around 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the US vs 60(!) in Singapore. A metro area of 5M in the US (the approx population of Singapore) would have >1,000.
I suspect there must be something else at play here. Perhaps they (Singapore and USA) count all drugs like Tylenol/Paracetamol and EU/Poland only counts illicit drugs. I can't believe there would be such a huge difference unless there is a mistake in data somewhere.
0 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db457.htm#:~:te....
It seems the difference really is that huge. US 32.6 per 100k in EU it is 1.83 per 100k(18.3 per million) so similar to Singapore. Within EU there is large variability between countries. In US it seems the number of overdose deaths raised 5 fold recently! Recently. In EU they say it raised recently in some countries but dropped in others so overall the trend is growing, but not that quickly.
After reading how they report this data there is one component that seems different. US includes suicides in its count (about 4% of reported overdose deaths) while it is unclear if EU does the same. So we should probably lower the US numbers by that 4%, but still the difference is an order of magnitude.
To me this data illustrates the point I made very well. Death penalty is not a crime deterrent.
Coming back to this huge number I was interested in finding out if it's US that has more than average of these deaths, or is it EU that has less and it's difficult to find reliable data for many other places. So I looked at India for example and I found an official report that claims all causes accidental deaths(including suicides) per 100k is less than just drug overdose deaths in US.
I wonder if there is any research that tries to answer why this is so. I'd love to find out.
But honestly, the US's problems are shared by many other Western democracies, albeit on a smaller scale. Polarization is happening in many different countries, even ones that lack the two-party system of the US.