Recently, a little-known yet nationally concerning fact was revealed at a meeting of the Sectoral Oversight Committee on An Open and Accountable Government. As per a senior Police officer who responded to a question about Sri Lanka’s efforts and progress with regard to arresting the perpetrators of various crimes that took place in recent history, especially those who have fled the country, the death penalty, although glorified as an effective deterrent and a necessity to punish grave crimes, has slowed down the country’s attempts at having migrated criminals extradited.

Sri Lankan law enforcement authorities have identified a large number of criminals who fled the country after committing crimes. Of them, Red Notices have been issued against 148 persons, some of whom were extradited. While legal actions have been instituted against some in foreign countries such as India, there are doubts as to how much support Sri Lanka can get from international law enforcement bodies such as the INTERPOL, as per the said senior Police officer. The reason is the mere existence of the death penalty, which could be given to those who are convicted of two of the most common crimes, i.e. being in possession of drugs and murder. The said officer explained the gravity of this situation, noting that the INTERPOL has turned down Sri Lanka's requests to issue Red Notices for five migrated criminals. 

Many countries, with evolved democracies have banned the death penalty. Essentially, because of a sentence that has been proven ineffective and inhumane, rejected by almost all human rights-friendly nations, and most importantly, has not been enforced in Sri Lanka since the 1970s. However, the penalty remains as law in Sri Lanka, and as the law enforcement officers point out, is eroding the international support they need to effectively combat crime.  

It should be noted that it is not only the death penalty being law that prevents Sri Lanka from getting that support. It is the authorities’ inability or unwillingness to accept that the death penalty no longer is an effective deterrent. Sri Lanka political culture portrays it as an effective deterrent, this is often done following a crime spree or a major crime which shocks the public, as a theatrical appeasement to quell the public anger directed at the state for not combating crime effectively. However, the experiences of many countries and countless studies have proven that the death penalty is not nearly effective. Most importantly, it is a sentence that only aims to punish convicts, in other words, to take revenge for their transgressions, which goes against the values of a justice system in a civilised nation, that actually aim to rehabilitate convicts and release them back to the society as reformed, law-abiding citizens. To do away with the death penalty, the authorities need to do an honest assessment of what benefits the death penalty, even its mere existence, has brought to the country, and how other nations that replaced the death penalty with more effective sentences have benefitted from those. In fact, that is one point where Sri Lankan authorities’ inability to discern an effective sentence from a rigorous one shows. They appear to think that the more rigorous a law is, the more effective it is, which is an extremely ill-informed notion.  Globally, law enforcement experts are of the same view, death penalty is not an effective deterrent.  

At the same time, as international bodies have, Sri Lanka should pay more attention to the human rights aspect of the concept of death penalty, especially as a country with a highly questionable human rights record. As the incident regarding the rejected requests for INTERPOL’s Red Notice clearly shows, the non-enforcement of the death penalty is not a good-enough excuse, because the existence and granting of the death penalty allows Sri Lanka to threaten people with death penalty and to enforce it at any moment by enacting the necessary legal provisions. One of the most adverse impacts of the death penalty is its irreversibility. Once a person is executed, there is no return, and it completely prevents that person from appealing to the judiciary that he/she be given another chance to prove their innocence which goes against the fundamental values of the justice system.

Instead of turning a blind eye to these obvious reasons, the lawmakers should take the right decisions in accordance with scientifically-proven and logically-sound facts. It is not difficult to understand that if such an archaic and an ineffective law affects the country’s ability to obtain international support to curb ongoing crimes, the lawmakers have to take a decision about the former.