The Public Death Sentence

Why don't we hang people on the streets anymore? If deterrence is the reason for the death sentence, its effect would be maximized by a public hanging like the kind done just about a hundred years ago. Private hangings seem insidious, against the interests of transparency. When the state hangs someone in private, citing the preservation of the dignity of the criminal is pointless. It seems to me that we do it to shield, from our spotlessly shiny, marbled bank buildings, theatres and relentless shopping malls, the blood and dead flesh; to protect the bespectacled men with expensive cars, women with overpriced handbags, children entertained only by junk food and tv, wealthy but queasy tourists, from the physical terror, mental stress and moral disgust that I imagine would certainly result from driving the true effect and purpose of the collective killing an individual home.

I will slowly start writing here regularly again, perhaps I will be ready for it to take me back to the person I was when I wrote with faithful commitment. As I near the end of my Singapore education in law, these political-legal issues are no longer subjects of classroom discussions, hushed jokes and daring essays. The further I am empowered with legal skills, the more these issues become my responsibility to turn into reality - the transmission of knowledge, the assumption of activity, the grind of detailed research and typing work in Word documents.