Has the murder count increased since the abolition of hanging?

i think its fair to say it has! i dont think its due to hanging bein abolished, i think capital punishment is wrong, but i think that prisons need to be less cushy!
Has the murder count increased since the abolition of hanging?
People think it has. But the reality is the opposite.





The Death penalty is a deterent until some one kills. Then it has the opposite effect.
Has the murder count increased since the abolition of hanging?
It seems to have done so, but obviously the figures need careful examination. What, exactly, counts as a murder?





Firstly, when I was a boy just after the 2WW, it was murder when someone assaulted another intending serious harm, and the victim died. Nowadays, unless there can be shown to have been an actual intention to kill, the charge will be manslaughter or, depending on the circumstances, perhaps even a lesser charge.





Clearly, to establish whether there has been a real or only an an apparent rise in murders, we must accept a common definition. It might not matter which one we use, but we must use the same definition for any two periods under comparison.





Next, we have to consider the probability of detection. If (say in 1950) a poisoner had a 50% chance of the death being accepted as natural, while improved analytical technique meant that in 2000 he had only a 1% chance, the rate of poisonings will seem to have doubled over 50 years if it actually remained constant in that period. The same applies to all other changes in police method, technology etc. Improved detection is of course not the same thing as increased criminality. For instance the number of speeding fines has gone through the roof since cameras were introduced, but I do not think that more people speed.





Numbers, then, can be misleading. On the basis of my own experience, I think that in fact our lives are more at risk than they were - but the abolition of hanging is a symptom, not a cause of a shift in society.





Society protects our lives by punishing those who take them. Now, if (as a nation) we value individual life less, the crimes and the punishments will be piecemeal and progressively downgraded. This has happened.





At one time, the deliberate killing of a newborn child by its mother was murder; a long time ago this crime was reduced to infanticide. At one time, you were protected while developing in your mother's womb; this protection has been withdrawn. At one time the life of the elderly was protected as much as that of the young; now the NHS progressively withdraws medical support after the age of 70, and euthanasia is under discussion.





The systematic reduction of the punishment for killing (there is a move away from the life sentence at this moment) is only a symptom of our increasing disregard of the wish of individuals to go on living.





With this as background, it is not surprising that our children are popping each other off with knives and guns. They are doing as children always do - absorbing and responding to the manners and opinions current among their elders.