By Austin Kaluba –
“PUNISHMENT is the way society expresses its denunciation of wrong doing in order to maintain respect for the law, it is essential that the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them.” – Lord Denning.
Though more than five decades have elapsed since Alfred Thompson “Tom” Denning made the above statement, the words still have a particular relevance concerning the debate on whether to abolish or retain capital punishment.
The killings that have rocked Zambia have sparked calls to effect death penalty in Zambia since as you are reading this, several convicts on the death row are in limbo languishing in filthy conditions.
I have used the word limbo deliberately to highlight the literal meaning of being in a state of oblivion when one is cast aside or forgotten.
At another level, I have used the word to refer to the Roman Catholic’s  belief of  a region on the border of hell or heaven, serving as the abode after death of unbaptised infants and of the righteous who died before the coming of Christ.
In short, those who are sentenced to death and yet are not being executed are in limbo, which some proponents of human rights feel is worse than being killed.
Should Zambia then go ahead with effecting death sentences in view of the killings that have dominated newspaper headlines recently?
Or should the country continue sentencing people to death and yet mentally and physically torture them in torture chambers that places like Mukobeko Maximum prison are instead of executing them?
As Lord Denning observed, the great majority of citizens are expressing their revulsion at the killings which if unchecked will become normal and be part of our culture.
The same sentiments to effect the death penalty were raised when the country was rocked by ritual killings recently.
Going by numerous presidential commutations of the death penalties since the third republican president Levy Mwanawasa publicly vowed never to sign a death warrant during his tenure of office from 2002 until he died in office in 2008, there are slim chances of things changing.
We say this since his successor, President Rupiah Banda also promised in 2009 never sign a death warrant during his tenure of office.
Likewise, the fifth Republican President Michael Sata, who came into power in September 2011, personally opposed the death penalty and commuted 123 death sentences out of 214.
The latest commutation on July 16, 2015 by the incumbent President Edgar Lungu who commuted the death sentences of 332 inmates, all held at the Mukobeko Maximum Security Prison in Kabwe, to life imprisonment speaks volumes that no death penalty will likely be effected.
With this fact glaring at us, maybe the debate now should be the conditions in prison which are euphemistically called ‘correctional centres.’
We say this since inmates often have to sleep sitting or standing, pressed up against one another since there is usually no space to lie down.
Ventilation in Zambian prisons is also very poor with sanitation being insufficient and filthy, sometimes consisting only of a hole in the ground or a bucket.
The food provided is so inadequate in quantity and in quality that prisoners suffer continuously from hunger and food brought from the outside by relatives has become a commodity traded for sex and labour in the prisons.
Malnutrition causes health problems ranging from diarrhoea, dental problems and failing eyesight to nutritional deficit disorders that can result in death.
Access to hospital care for serious medical conditions is determined by medically untrained prison officials and hindered by a lack of transfer staff, vehicles and fuel, and can be delayed for days or weeks.
Prisoners transported to outside hospitals or clinics are shackled to their beds at all times and face negligence, discrimination and humiliation from medical staff and other patients.
Inmates sentenced to death are confined separately from the rest of the population at Mukobeko Maximum Security Prison.
A 2008 interview by a released death row inmate revealed that 306 death row prisoners were crammed into 48 cells intended for 96 prisoners, with two mattresses to each cell.
The death row prisoners were permitted to leave their cells during the day but were confined to an area of about 3 by 30 metres.
Even with such a grim picture retention of death penalty should not be readily criticised without debating the subject at length.
From ancient time, the heinous act of killing a human being has always attracted an equal harsh retribution.
The Code of Hammurabi based on the historical record, a Babylonian legal code of the 18th century B.C chronicles the earliest evidence which had the record of the death penalty.
Nowadays, even though many people oppose the enforcement of the death penalty, it should be maintained.
The debate should shift to the conditions of death row convicts who even before being hanged are already the living dead.