On Monday, April 3, in a historic decision, the Malaysian parliament passed legal reforms to do away with the mandatory death sentence. The parliament also reduced the number of crimes subject to the death penalty and abolished sentences of natural life in prison as part of the comprehensive legal changes that were approved. According to the news agency Reuters, the recently approved amendments will now offer alternatives to the death sentence, such as whipping and imprisonment for 30 to 40 years. All clauses heretofore providing for imprisonment for the term of the natural life of the offender shall be repealed.
The death penalty was an irreversible sentence that had not been a successful crime deterrent
Since 2018, there haven’t been any killings in the nation. The agency report also noted the retention of life sentences, which under Malaysian law were defined as a fixed term of 30 years. Ramkarpal Singh, the deputy law minister, claimed that the death penalty was an irreversible sentence that had not been a successful crime deterrent. As he concluded the parliamentary debates on the bill, he declared that “the death penalty has not brought the results it was intended to bring.”