"I want to do it on Bay Street" said the Bahamian agriculture minister Alfred Gray last Tuesday, as reported by the Nassau Guardian. Yes, that would be public hangings.Bay Street is in the historic heart of the Bahamian capital, Nassau. Giant cruise ships dock almost alongside; the street bustles with Bahamians on their daily rounds and with tourists shopping happily for duty-free bling.If Gray wants front-page worldwide publicity for his country's disastrous crime and murder rates, public hanging is the way to go.
Amnesty International reports public executions last year in Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Nice company.The last public hanging in Britain was in 1868; indeed next year marks 50 years since Britain's last judicial execution of any kind. The last public hanging in the US was in 1936; a black man in Kentucky.Hanging does not deter murderers. Violent criminals are not risk-averse; that is why they are violent criminals, rather than bank tellers.
The most recent Caribbean hanging was in St Kitts, five years ago next Thursday. Days from Christmas, Basseterre's prison bell rang as Charles Laplace was hanged for stabbing his wife Diana in Fig Tree Village four years earlier.That hanging–carried out with unnecessary brutality–got splash coverage in Britain's Daily Mail. The Mail sells close to two million copies in its home market. In the US, it is the ninth most popular news site, pulling 40 million monthly visitors.
There were 23 murders in St Kitts and Nevis the year before the hangings. The year after, there were 27. By 2011, the body count was up to 34; the tiny country had by far the highest per capita murder rate in the English-speaking Caribbean.Gray may by now have had time to re-think last week's outburst. He was perhaps panicked by Monday's gunpoint invasion of the home of his deputy prime minister Philip "Brave" Davis–then acting PM, with his boss Perry Christie in South Africa for Nelson Mandela's memorial.
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