The Foreign Service Journal, October 2003

And on that score, the abolition- ist view fails. Consistent with our expectations and our conceptions of deterrence, the rates of violent crime in the United Kingdom and on the Continent are rising — up 20 percent in England; 37 percent in Italy and 31 percent in France in the second half of the 1990s. Homicides in England, for example, rose from 725 in 1991 to 1,048 in 2002. At precisely the same time, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rates of violent crime fell 36 percent in America, while homicide rates dropped by more than half. Can the divergence be wholly attributed to respective attitudes toward the death penalty? Probably not. But we are entitled to ask Europeans who oppose capital punishment to offer an alternative explanation. Why does the European Union reject the notion of requiring a murderer to give his life as penance for his crime? At the heart of their outrage are, they claim, civil rights concerns. They say that every human being has a fundamental right to life. True. But the European Union and its abolitionist allies never turn the challenge around and ask: What of the right to life of the murdered? The rights of the victims and their families? If we refuse to punish those who kill, then where do those pained by their crimes turn for justice? More prosaically, though execution is physically identi- cal to murder, it is both morally and legally distinct — a distinction that the abolitionist view simply ignores. Finally, there lies behind this question a buried issue of national sovereignty. Simply stated, it has never been a tradition within the U.S. to submit to the whims of international bodies that, for the most part, are not F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 Evidence substantiating the deterrent effect of the death penalty is stronger than that against it. N O W A V A I L A B L E F R O M A F S A … The most informative book on the Foreign Service. Inside a U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America is a must-read for anyone who wants to know about the people who work in American embassies and consulates around the world. Share in the real-life experiences of the Foreign Service: the coups, the evacuations, the heroics, the hardships and the everyday challenges and rewards of representing America to the world. Order your copy today! Go to www.afsa.org/inside or call (847) 364-1222 to place an order by phone.