Could capital punishment be effective in Albania?!

Execution of criminals and murders has been used very long ago by almost all the societies. Some of the main reasons that leaded to death penalty have been betrayal, murder, espial, but also some other disturbing crimes as incest, rape, etc. The notion ‘death penalty’ by itself, brings to our minds the bitter taste of the primitive society, where the only people who suffered from this punishment were the innocent ones. That is a wrong notion. Maybe it is the same sorrowful scene, but the criminal justice system these days provides the accuracy of modern forensics and DNA testing, which makes it very unlikely for an innocent person to be punished with death penalty (“Pro death penalty”, 2011).

Albania has heard nothing about capital punishment since 1995, that a civilian was hanged. The capital punishment for murder was abolished in October 2000, while it still existed for betrayal and military offences. Seven years later Albania approved Protocol No. 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights and abolished the death penalty law under all circumstances by replacing it with life imprisonment (Wikipedia, 2013).

Statistics show that since in 2000 when the capital punishment was abolished, criminal rates have been increasing year by year. And if we take a look back in the period when capital punishment was legal, the murder rates were 41% lower than they are now (Ministry of Justice, 2013). The government may reflect on how to minimize this phenomenon by using a really shocking measure, but which may result effective. A possible start could be a consolidation of the laws in general and to the Penal Code in specific. The citizens need some strict laws to follow and a strict attitude regarding their execution. More specifically a stri...

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