The death penalty has not been carried out in Guyana since 1997. While it is true that there has been a large increase in murders since then, murders have equally soared in countries which have abolished the death penalty like South Africa as well as in countries which have not, like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The latter two and Belize are among the top ten countries for intentional homicide that have the death penalty. Three of these top ten countries that do not have the death penalty are Venezuela, El Salvador and Honduras.
The fact that the death penalty is not a deterrent to intentional homicide has long been established. For this reason, in recent decades the argument in relation to the death penalty has never been about the statistics, although supporters have disregarded them. At the core, the argument has always been about revenge, the eye for an eye philosophy.
The reducing number of states which support capital punishment continue to advance the argument that justice requires that the taking a life should legitimately result in a life being taken in return. The argument of justice is really the eye for an eye argument. Revenge is being openly touted as a principle of governance, at least in our region. The negative impact of this officially advocated revenge philosophy, justifying the taking of
