President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) have both said that abolishing capital punishment is a long-term goal of the government. Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) has on numerous occasions expressed support for abolishing the death penalty. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) has said that abolition is a worldwide trend and that it is only a question of when, not if, Taiwan will follow suit.

They have all clearly indicated that the death penalty will be done away with. None of them, however, has explained why they favor abolition. Their positions have a direct bearing on policy formation and implementation, so they should explain themselves clearly. They can’t just say abolition is an aim and then immediately find an excuse for not going ahead with it.

When policymakers voice their support for abolishing capital punishment, they routinely add that there is no timetable for abolition. At first glance, this may seem reasonable, but it implies the government intends to go on without scrapping the death penalty. When they say there is no timetable, they likely mean that they won’t have to settle the matter because they will not be in office forever.

Public opinion is often used as a pretext for not pushing for abolition, as politicians say it would have to wait until a majority of the public supports it. If the general public is asked a simple yes or no question on whether they want to see capital punishment abolished, the majority of people would say they are against scrapping it. Most opinion polls show that about 70 percent to 80 percent of respondents are against abolition.

It must be said, however, that public opinion is not such a simple matter. When asked whether they would support replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole, a majority of people — 53 percent — said they would. A survey showed that even more people — 62 percent — support the idea that, if criminals condemned to death behave well or show remorse, it should be possible for their sentences to be commuted to life sentences or long prison terms, while a minority of 35 percent opposed. Clearly, policies should account for the various shades of public opinion.

No matter whether capital punishment is retained or abolished, many complementary measures are needed. Ma has recently made several proposals, such as improving support for the relatives of crime victims, allowing capital punishment only when judges on a tribunal reach a unanimous verdict, that the Supreme Court should submit death sentences to verbal debate and so on.

An even more important factor is the public’s lack of trust in the judicial system, with 88 percent of people surveyed believing that death sentences could sometimes be handed down erroneously. Even those who support capital punishment call for great care to be taken in the judicial process.

Most complementary measures called for have not been adequately instituted or carried out. These measures appear all the more important while capital punishment continues to exist, but once a convict has been executed, governments feel they have done their bit to uphold justice and needn’t take further action. For example, support for crime victims’ relatives remains far short of the ideal.

The government has a responsibility to actively tackle these complementary measures. While it is enough for the public to propose measures and give their assistance, those in government must implement and take responsibility for the policies they propose.

Chiu Hei-yuan is convener of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty and a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.