Editor:
Re: Life sentence nothing more than sham, letter to the editor, June 11
Reading Steven Austin's letter on capital punishment leaves me with really just one comment: Thank goodness his reactionary, but ill-informed, opinion has no real place or opportunity in the administration of the current criminal justice system.
In Austin's words, I am certainly a "death penalty opponent." I have never before been at all aware that I spend a lot of my time "wallowing," though.
There is not one single, responsibly researched and established statistic that in any way suggests capital punishment affords any benefit at all to our communities.
In fact, it accomplishes the exact opposite: it brutalizes.
My perspective is a little bit informed on this matter. Among other experiences studying and working in the criminal justice milieu, I was employed in several different "prison" settings in a couple of jurisdictions across Canada.
I started work in these environments as a "guard" in a maximum-security facility in Ontario. My first independent assignment in this kind of context was to "guard" - by myself, for an eight-hour shift - the "death row" corridor.
The corridor housed an inmate waiting to be put to death by hanging. He wasn't, thank goodness, even though I viewed him as an arrogant little twerp.
I also worked in my early capacity with a number of colleagues who had been directly involved in the last instance of capital punishment that transpired in Canada, and the gallows employed in that instance was right next door to "my inmate's" cell and corridor.
My experience may not prove or substantiate anything to Austin and his ilk. It does lend context to my reply to his letter, however.
Speaking strictly and only to Austin's central thesis in his letter, further unthinking and reactionary brutality (capital punishment), exercised by the state and by us all, has only negative effects. The U.S. is a good example of this.
Firth Bateman
