JOHANNESBURG - "Be careful what you wish for."
That’s retired Justice Edwin Cameron’s warning to those calling for the return of the death penalty in South Africa.
Calls for capital punishment have resurfaced amid the country’s ongoing gender-based violence crisis, with some arguing that the harshest possible sentence could deter violent crime.
But Cameron says there is no evidence that the death penalty reduces crime.
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He says while he understands the desire for vengeance among families who have lost loved ones to violent crime, it should not form the basis of the country’s justice system.
Cameron says South Africa should instead focus on improving crime intelligence, policing, the courts and the National Prosecuting Authority.
The debate has been reignited by the GBV crisis and a recent botched execution in the United States, where a convicted murderer was left in critical condition.
South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1995 after the Constitutional Court found it unconstitutional.
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Cameron, who was a Constitutional Court justice at the time, says the decision marked a turning point for the country.
He says the death penalty under apartheid was deeply unequal, with black and marginalised people disproportionately affected.
“What we did in 1995 when the Constitutional Court heard its first case, which was on the death penalty, we turned our back on the brutality and the inequity.”
Almost three decades later, however, the issue has returned to the public debate.
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Cameron says the appeal of the death penalty is understandable, particularly among people who have lost loved ones to violent crime.
But he argues that harsher sentences alone will not solve the country’s crime problem.
“We can say that those who commit grievous bodily harm on women, gender-based violence, feminised intimate partner violence should be executed in rare cases to deter others. The fact is there is no evidence that the death penalty inhibits crime.”
Cameron says the focus should instead be on ensuring that criminals are consistently identified, arrested, prosecuted and sentenced.
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“What will put an end to crimes, we know already and has been supported by masses of empirical evidence, is consistent detection, follow-up, arrest, arraignment, trial, and sentencing to imprisonment or some other sentence.”
He says South Africa’s biggest problem is not necessarily the severity of sentences, but the number of perpetrators who never face justice.
Cameron says only 11 percent of murderers in South Africa are prosecuted and imprisoned, meaning the vast majority escape that outcome.
His argument is that improving the certainty of detection and prosecution could do more to combat violent crime than bringing back the death penalty.