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 14 April 1965.

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Photo of Miss Alice Bacon Miss Alice Bacon , Leeds South East 12:00, 14 April 1965

Yes, there is something in what my hon. Friend says, but I wanted to give the Committee the full figures, since some doubt was expressed about these figures by the hon. Member for Dorset, North. I wanted to get them absolutely right.

During my period at the Home Office I have had to deal with a great many of the cases and the files and the punishments which have been awarded for assaults and for violence on the part of prisoners against prison officers. It is true to say that the overwhelming majority of these assaults and acts of violence take place on the spur of the moment. They are sudden, uncontrollable outbursts, born of the unnatural conditions of prison life, in an atmosphere where grievances are nursed and small incidents become enlarged. So there is this sudden hitting out against authority. It is not something which is anything to do with whether we have the death penalty or not. There are these sudden outbursts of temper on the part of people who have been in prison, perhaps for a considerable time.

But I admit that there are in our prisons a small number of dangerous, brutal prisoners, probably not there because they have committed murder at all, who present a very special problem. Between 1957 and 1964, 52 people were convicted of capital murder. Twenty-nine of these were executed, which means that 23 of those convicted between 1957 and 1964 are in our prisons today. Taking the figures for the past few years individually, in 1960, nine persons were convicted of capital murder, five of whom were executed. In 1961 the figures were the same. This means that four in each year had to be accommodated in prison. In 1962, four people were convicted of capital murder, three of whom were executed. In 1963 the figure was four, two of whom were executed. In 1964, the figure was six, two of whom were executed.

It can be seen that each year the extra numbers who would have to be accommodated in prison if the Bill becomes law is very low indeed. There are at present 365 prisoners serving sentences of life imprisonment. I know—I readily admit this to those hon. Members who support the Amendment—that it is not the numbers which trouble them. What troubles them is whether, in future, there will be more trouble in prison because of the abolition of the death penalty. Will the fact that there is no death penalty mean that the long-term prisoner, perhaps not a murderer, will try to obtain his freedom by force and possibly murder a prison officer?

Since 1900, two borstal inmates have been convicted of the murder of a prison officer, and in one case also there was the murder of a matron of a borstal institution. During that period no prisoner has been convicted of the murder of a prison officer. I know that there are those hon. Gentlemen who support the Amendment who would argue that this has been so because of the existence of the death penalty. Their argument is that, without the death penalty, the position would be different.