The Editor, Sir:

MY JOB finds me doing a high level of direct customer service. My clientele aren't always reasonable, aren't always right, but, as a professional, I cannot allow anyone to determine the quality of service I offer. My purpose always is to be deliberate in giving exemplary customer service - no matter what.

It is worrying, just and fair, as it may, in principle, seem to be, that murderers are seemingly making us like them. Albeit for different reasons, like them, we want blood. Whenever I hear of a horror committed by a criminal, my first instinct is to rip him/her apart. When the dust settles, however, I don't think I want someone's blood on my shoulder.

One life late

Then let us consider this: If we have to hang someone, it means someone else has already been killed. Hanging, therefore, will always be at least one life late. Furthermore, there is also the challenge of improving our less than 40 per cent success rate in solving our murder cases.

So, rather than merely quenching our own bloodthirstiness, how might hanging really bring down the crime rate? I am not sure. But I'm sure that hanging will always ensure that someone else will die at the hands of another person. Then of greater urgency to criminals is that if they are caught within certain communities, they will be hacked to death, or by the police - they may be shot. These realities don't seem to matter to them. Why would hanging matter, when they may appeal and get a repeal?

So though it seems fair that if you take a life, you should rightly forfeit yours, I would vote against the retention of hanging.

I am, etc.,

CHARLES EVANS

charock01@yahoo.com

Via Go-Jamaica