The difference between drug enforcement in a large continental sized country, versus a country of thousands of islands simply cannot be overstated. A poor nation with a sometimes very corrupt, and grossly under funded police service versus western law enforcement, equally so!
This country is positioned such that it could easily be overrun by drug couriers moving drugs to quench mostly western demand. Those drugs are going to get run through the countries with the least draconian laws, to some extent.
To believe every countrie’s drug enforcement issues are the same is beyond silly, in my opinion.
I don’t agree with the death penalty myself. But they seem best positioned to understand what WILL work as a deterrent to those involved in trafficking in their sphere, not westerners, in my opinion.
These numbers are just guesses to the real numbers, but let’s say for example that:
60% of those who would be imprisoned for life die in jail after 30-40 years there.
35% are released in old age, after some 30-40 years in jail. They’ll live on average 5-10 more years.
4% are released based on previous trial being ruled invalid (e.g., technical issues) after 10-40 years in jail. They’ll live on average 10-40 more years.
1% are released based on exonerating evidence coming to light after 10-40 years in jail. They’ll live on average 10-40 more years.
If we have 100 convicts, the average number of years that we are torturing them for is something like 3450 cumulative years.
The number of years that we are saving is 125, which are generally going to be more towards the end of the person’s life and, and we only have reason to believe that 25 years of those went to someone who was actually innocent.
Oh joy! I’ve given one innocent person 25 years of freedom after torturing him for 25 years. And the only cost to that is putting people through a meaningless, unfulfilled life for 3450 years instead of accepting the math and letting them have another try in their next life.
More specifically some people object to death sentences for non-violent crimes. Also the people caught are low level drug mules who are doing this because of desperate circumstances or in some cases under threat of violence to their relatives. These are not drug kingpins, they’re getting paid some low percentage of the value of the drugs to take the risk.
Certainly 30-40 years in an Indonesian prison would be just as much a deterrent as the death penalty, while still allowing them to be seen to be “tough on drugs”.
Actually, what I would be saying is, “Oh, joy! I have not killed anyone and certainly not 100 convicts, some of whom may be innocent, especially given that they were convicted in a country with a corrupt police force.”
Protip: Don’t smuggle drugs into Indonesia. Consider not smuggling illegal drugs anywhere. Get a square job, accept the pay cut, and learn to appreciate the value of the virtue of a straight life.
I don’t consider smuggling ~9 lbs of cocaine into a foreign country as “non-violent”. That much cocaine, statistically, is likely to kill somebody. If you don’t care about that because there is money in it for you, why should Indonesia care about executing you? It could be cast as self-defense.
Same for the guy who mass-manufactured ecstasy. It isn’t common, but people do die because of that drug. Who am I to tell Indonesia they can’t execute this guy?
All this, including the fact that I appreciate the arguments for why capital punishment is universally bad. I guess it prompts the classic philosophical question: Why do bad things happen to bad people?
… never mind the absurdity of stating “let them have another try in their next life.” You may personally believe in reincarnation, Sage Rat, but a good lot of us here at the Dope are pretty sure that this life is all we get. “Let them have another try in their next life” is taking the lives of potentially innocent people so lightly that it honestly revolts me a little bit.
With regards to the heart of the matter, I don’t necessarily have a whole lot of sympathy for drug smugglers, but I’m squarely on the side of believing the death penalty is unconscionably barbaric and reflects poorly on Indonesian society as a whole.
Lets get real. If this case did not involvea British woman an a Frenchie and last year did not include two Australians no one East and North of Suez or in the Antipodes would have given two fucks about any of the people you mentioned.
Absolutely. Amnesty International never protests death sentences unless the convicts are white. Certainly Ban Ki-Moon and the UN were only concerned with the Australians when he condemned the executions.
There are lots of people in the “west” who oppose the death penalty everywhere and for all people, not just white folks. I’m one of them. So don’t fucking presume to tell me what I think or what I care about.
This is, I think, the strongest argument against the death penalty: that government is so corrupt and incompetent that we shouldn’t trust it with the power to hire crossing guards, let alone decide who should live and who should die. It has me almost persuaded to switch teams and oppose the death penalty.
That being said, their country, their rules. Don’t break the law in Indonesia, or you might end up facing a firing squad.
Some of us have to travel and work in “less developed countries” or as you put it “third world shit holes”. The reality is that if you keep your nose clean and mind your own business you won’t get in trouble. Those caught either are really dealing or pissed off the wrong person, which usually means they are involved in “the business” in some way and didn’t pay a big enough bribe.
Indonesia and particularly Bali has a massive tourist industry and they don’t make a habit of jeopardising that by planting drugs on random people. Of course if you are stupid enough to try and buy something there, all bets are off and you deserve what you get.
True, my point may be less valid in Indonesia. Though one ventures to guess that even in Indonesia, the exceeding majority of people jailed are guilty and it’s certainly true that either killing someone or locking them in a box for the rest of their life, you’re depriving them of their life.
In the sense that it is reversible. You cannot un-execute a convict, but you sure as shit can let them out of prison. Now, granted, they may not necessarily rehabilitate well, but at the very least they have the basic opportunity to rehabilitate. You cannot give a convict whose body you have perforated with bullets/heart you have stopped with pentobarbital/etc a second chance at society if it so turns out that they are in fact innocent.
To impose the death penalty is to either declare that you have complete and utter certitude that the legal system never makes a mistake (absurd on the face of it) or that you consider it acceptable collateral when innocents are put to death.
I’ve never met an American that HAD to travel / work in third-world countries. It’s always a choice, albeit usually one with some downsides if the person chooses not to (like losing / foregoing a job).
In the case of Bali, it’s probably more likely that you get rolled up in some criminal case you’re innocent of than, say, Iowa, but probably less likely than somewhere like Iran. Life’s full of risk.
Capital punishment is effective as a deterrent or it is not, anywhere. If it works even a bit it will work far less in a place where poor people have fewer options.
Does anyone anywhere have evidence the death penalty is an effective deterrent?
This is a classic fallacy of agglomeration, or, to put it another way, a failure to recognize the prisoner’s dilemma problem. For Indonesia as a whole, planting drugs on random people is a losing proposition. For the individual corrupt cop who actually does it, it has a pretty good chance of being either a winning proposition (if the attempt to shake down the victim to make the problem go away is successful) or a neutral* one (if not).
*Well, maybe very very very slightly negative, to the extent that any one particular resident is harmed by one more little crack in the foundation of the nation’s reputation as something other than a no-go zone.