Abstract
This article examines state justifications for capital punishment in Singapore. Singapore is a unique case study because capital punishment has largely been legitimised and justified by state officials. It illustrates how Singapore justifies capital punishment by analysing official discourse. Discussion will focus on the government’s narrative on capital punishment, which has been primarily directed against drug trafficking. Discussion will focus on Singapore’s death penalty regime and associated official discourse that seeks to justify state power to exercise such penalties, rather than the ethics and proportionality of capital punishment towards drug-related crimes. Critical analysis from a criminological perspective adds to the growing body of literature that seeks to conceptualise social and political phenomena in South-East Asia.
Highlights
The electorate is encouraged to trust and respect its democratically voted leadership’s decisions to uplift societal welfare over self-interest, especially in the face of repressive interventions that potentially abuse individual rights (Chua 1995, 187, 210). This is in addition to the fact that the legal validity of state power to exercise capital punishment has been assumed to be a given by the current government in power, as its ability to decide on penal practices was conferred upon it by electoral success
Deterrence and ensuring the safety and security of its citizens have been identified as the key rationales invoked to legitimise the continuation of capital punishment in the face of the global abolition movement
Singapore’s choice to retain and emphasise state executions in response to drug offences needs to be understood within its tough legal framework
Summary
The study of capital punishment in Singapore has reflected embedded communitarian and survivalist ideals through the tropes of deterrence, national vulnerability, defence collective interests and the sacrifice of individual rights, with the latter two representing Asian and Western values respectively. The government satisfies its political interests of retaining and exerting its authority to exercise draconian forms of state power and the legal validity of punishment policy and practice, as opposed to formulating penal policies in direct response to occurrences of crime This is due largely to the fact that political and legal decisions have been made possible through the one-party government that has ruled Singapore since 1968 (Chua 1995, 40). The electorate is encouraged to trust and respect its democratically voted leadership’s decisions to uplift societal welfare over self-interest, especially in the face of repressive interventions that potentially abuse individual rights (Chua 1995, 187, 210) This is in addition to the fact that the legal validity of state power to exercise capital punishment has been assumed to be a given by the current government in power, as its ability to decide on penal practices was conferred upon it by electoral success. The controversy and debate in this case stems from the outrage of being criticised internationally for a domestic criminal justice issue, as opposed to the administration of capital punishment per se (Leong 2008; Oehlers and Tarulevicz 2005)
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