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Death Penalty

We have been asked about our stance on the death penalty/ capital punishment a number of times. In order to clarify this, we have issued the following statement;

We believe that a decision of this significance should be made by the people of New Zealand at a Referendum. It is is too important, and too contentious, to be made by politicians on their behalf, or for that matter by any group, ourselves included.

Therefore we are not making any public stand either for or against the death penalty/ capital punishment. We feel that this issue needs to be the subject of a seperate public debate before the public at large make their decision upon the matter. We as a group do not intend to involve ourselves in any such debate. Although individuals within Sensible Sentencing may have their own views on this matter, these should not be taken to be representative of the organisation as a whole.

This interesting article on Capital punishment in New Zealand from the NZ History online site gives an extensive background of the death penalty in New Zealand. This seems to be a reasonably informative and unbiased article.