Orders of the Day — Clause 1. — (Abolition of Death Penalty for Murder.)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 7 April 1965.

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Photo of Miss Alice Bacon Miss Alice Bacon , Leeds South East 12:00, 7 April 1965

Yes, I believe that that is true. On the other hand, as I said, we understand that the chief constables' association decided not to make any representations.

In his speech on 31st March the hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) talked about removing the death penalty and said: It is proposed to remove that fear. It is all very well to say that we can do this with safety. Those who claim it must prove it. It is not for those who say that the protection should be maintained to prove that it is necessary. The onus lies upon those who say that we can do away with it. Let us see the evidence that it can be done away with in safety.— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st March, 1965; Vol. 709, c. 1609.] The hon. and learned Member said that it was up to us to produce evidence. As he knows, it is very difficult to prove what will happen in the future. We can quote figures for the past, but it is understandable that when figures are quoted from the past in this country those who are in favour of the retention of the death penalty say that the figures are useless; they say that they are low because there has been the death penalty in the past. I agree that they have an argument there. But when in previous sittings we have quoted from other countries, we have been told that the evidence of other countries does not apply because they are different from this country. It is therefore very difficult indeed to know the evidence which the hon. and learned Gentleman would like.

I have, however, done a little research during the past week and I have found that a few years ago research was made in different States in the United States. At the end of 1954 Professor Sellin of the University of Pennsylvania carried out a survey of a large number of American cities to establish whether the existence of the death penalty made any difference in the number of criminals prepared to use lethal weapons against the police. The result of this survey was published in a book called "The Death Penalty" by Professor Sellin, published by the American Law Institute in Philadelphia in 1959.

Professor Sellin wrote to the police departments in 593 cities in the United States with populations of more than 10,000. He asked for information about the killing of police officers by criminals during the period from 1919 to 1954. Altogether, 274 replies were received, of which 266 were found to be good enough for statistical purposes. One of these, Chicago, which had retained the death penalty, had had 168 policemen killed, which was more than in all the other 265 cities put together. The 265 which I have just mentioned were in 11 States which had retained the death penalty and six in which it had been abolished. In the cities in the six abolitionist States there had been 1·2 fatal attacks on policemen per 100,000 of the population and in the 11 death penalty States the rate was 1·3 per 100,000 of the population.