The recent announcement of the government’s plan to abolish death penalty has caused significant uproar. Among the comments found on Facebook are:

“Oh, now the drug lords’ businesses will boom.”

“Why do criminals deserve human rights when they did not consider the victims’ rights while committing the crime.”

“I do not want my tax money to be used to sustain these criminals for life.”

“An eye for an eye.”

Yes, the abolition of the death penalty does sound benevolent in the name of human rights, taking into account of the fallibility of the criminal justice system and the fact that the existence of death penalty all this while has failed to reduce the rates of capital offences.

But what is the alternative?

Commutation of a death sentence to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole is merely a cosmetic change in the name of human rights if the conversion is to be carried out without a concrete plan to rehabilitate the inmates or integrate them into a new system.

Rehabilitative programmes may be planned by the prison board in collaboration with NGOs and religious bodies. However, for death-row inmates whose sentences are to be commuted to life sentences without any possibility of parole, how do we make them, or rather give them the option of contributing back to society?

Historically, the concept of prison labour is not new. The death penalty may sound cruel, but what if we give the death row inmates a choice of escaping the gallows in exchange of a life sentence without possibility of parole where they have to work certain jobs at a particular rate calculated to sustain their own lives in prison? They should be allowed to choose between their death sentence or a life sentence with a labour plan.

Of course, suggestions like this may trigger another set of human rights argument as to “forced labour”. However, the fallibility of the criminal justice system should also not be used as a blanket immunity against “punishment” imposed on the inmates.

Ideally, a death-row inmate should not have the best of both worlds – after committing a heinous crime and having his life spared, a convict shouldn’t be sustained at the taxpayers’ expense until he dies.

Realistically, the Home Ministry probably has an allocated budget to sustain each inmate. If death-row inmates who choose to work as an alternative to being hanged to death, it would be a win-win situation for both the country and the inmates.

One possibility would be to allow companies that produce items of necessity to set up factories within the vicinity of prisons and prisoners may be ferried there by prison bus.

These factories may hire inmates to work at a lower-than-usual rate. This would lead to the lowering of production costs for those items, which would be advantageous to consumers. While inmates get to escape the gallows, they would work to sustain their prison stay, thereby shifting the burden of their living costs away from the taxpayers.

In the event their wages cover more than the cost of sustaining their prison existence, the inmates may be given the extra money. Also, in the event the inmate is repeatedly subjected to disciplinary action, something like the California three-strike rule could apply whereby the inmate’s sentence shall be reverted back to his original sentence for his lack of remorse.