Jim Bennett has a follow-up email that points out that more than four out of five Brits would like to see the death penalty restored. While the numbers aren't as high, I've seen polls in the other EU countries that indicate that this is a majority opinion there as well.

I assume that the UK and those other places are all examples of those "world's major democracies" to which the previous post was referring, but as Jim points out, we seem to do a much better job of actually implementing the will of the people over here.

An interesting argument, but he never cites which poll showed that a majority of people favor the death penalty (by the way, 72 percent of people know that statistics can be used to prove anything).

And 97.4% of all polls are inaccurate, though they're often quite precise.

Trouble with that figure of 4 in 5 of us Brits wanting the death penalty is that we've just had a very high profile case of two children that were murdered (probabbly) by a school caretaker. Whenever anything like this happens the right wing press immediately calls for the reintorduction of the death penalty and castration for sex offenders, and in the aftermath the public agrees.
Last year one newspaper had a campaign to 'name and shame' paedophiles after a young girl was murdered, the result of which was a mob attacking a paedetrician.

I'll bet it was still a majority even before that.

>> Last year one newspaper had a campaign to 'name and shame' paedophiles after a young girl was murdered, the result of which was a mob attacking a paedetrician.

If you folks dropped random vowels, maybe the masses wouldn't get so confused.

Or, maybe if you wouldn't tell people that any such notice is an excuse for random attacks they wouldn't use it as such.

John O'Sullivan did not cite the specific poll in his column that I referenced; perhaps Iain Murray might be able to identify it. I don't doubt that the recent murders were responsible for the spike in the yes answers, but I recall the number consistently running at around 70-75% in a variety of polls over the last few years, actually within a few points of the American poll results. Leftist British journalist Jonathan Freedland raised a controversey some years ago in his book Bring Home the Revolution when he argued that if Britian were more democratic it would be more like America in a number of ways; the death penalty was one of his examples.

But I though tyou Brits DID have the death penalty!
You just call it National Health...

Oooooh, David, nasty jab!

Andy, Jim is right. It is possible there was a small spike, but a very solid majority has been in favor of it for years. Same is true in Italy.