The War on Crime

Amnesty International's annual survey on capital punishment shows an increase in executions, even when the thousands thought to have taken place in China are excluded. Saudi Arabia executed at least seventy-nine people, including three juveniles; although, as with China, no doubt things would have been a jolly sight worse without the humanitarian finger-wagging of the Bullingdon Club. The United States executed thirty-nine, gaining it a place in this exalted moral league table between the hereditary theocracy of Saudi Arabia and the former failed state of Somalia. After China and Iran, the most enthusiastic killer state was Iraq, which executed almost thirty per cent more people in 2013 than in 2012, many on "vague charges related to anti-terrorism laws." Evidently the Reverend Blair's civilising mission has not been entirely in vain.