Last week was something of a roller coaster in Singapore, as those following the case of Aussie drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van may conclude.

Judging from the comments of Malaysian Foreign Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar, the emotionally charged issue has opened even his eyes to what is a challenging and controversial issue globally.

That the minister felt the need to offer comment in support of his Asean friends is commendable. It upholds the grouping's solidarity in the face of attacks over matters of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

It validated once again that, as one-time members of the Federation of Malaysia, both nations would see the issue through the prism of their common cultural heritage.

If anyone remembers, Malaysia too faced the same situation some 20 years. When Aussie drug smugglers Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were executed for drug trafficking, the tension was such that it chilled relations between both nations.

Murder is abhorrent to all of us. Taking a human life cheapens and impoverishes a civilisation.

Yet while condemning murder, we seem complacent about state-sanctioned murder despite the well publicised fact that laws by themselves are not about justice. They are there for stability and order.

Through a law that permits a life to be taken, we commit murder by fiat. But because it is fiat, it suddenly is not abhorrent, at least for some of us.

Complexity of crime

There is no clear understanding to how and why crime originates. If this exists, it would be that much simple to rationalise the merits and demerits of the death penalty.

In the case of drugs and the excruciating harm it inflicts, drug barons push their pernicious trade through runners.

So for every runner that Singapore and Malaysia executes, a baron simply replaces the 'mule' with another.

Herein lies the paradox. The death penalty is the ultimate punishment as a deterrent. But because of the difficulty of apprehending those barons, the trade is perpetuated in a ridiculous cycle of death and peddling.

So what is the cause of drug running? Desperate men tied down by desperate circumstances are trying to find a way out by resorting to drug dealing.

And so long as desperation prevails in the misery wrought by poverty and deprivation, barons will continue finding a way to traffic drugs.

The deterrence of the death penalty has never been proven. If indeed it does act as a deterrent, then there should be fewer drug runners around.

Trying to understand deterrence by the death penalty causes injustice to what constitutes crime because crime will always continue to be a complex phenomenon.

The death penalty only adds to its complexity. It is just not the way to seek redress in our criminal justice system.

JAYA PRAKASH lectures in journalism at Beacon School of Technology in Singapore.