obligation to protect these rights. If the state fails to discharge this duty adequately, there is a danger that individuals might feel justified in using self-help to protect their rights. This is not a fanciful possibility in South Africa. "The need for a strong deterrent to violent crime" is underscored by the President in his judgment as is the duty of the state, through the criminal justice system, to ensure that offenders will be apprehended and convicted, for these steps are conditions precedent to punishment.[1]
[169]Apart from deterring others, one of the goals of punishment is to prevent the convicted prisoner from committing crimes again. Both the preventative and reformative components of punishment are directed towards this end, although reformation obviously has the further commendable aim of the betterment of the prisoner. Society as a whole is justifiably concerned that this aim of punishment should be achieved and society fears the possibility that the violent criminal, upon release from prison, will once again harm society. Society is particularly concerned with the possibility of this happening in the case of an unreformed recidivist murderer or rapist if the death penalty is abolished.
[170]The President has rightly pointed out in his judgment that in considering the deterrent effect of the death sentence the evaluation is not to be conducted by contrasting the death penalty with no punishment at all but between the death sentence and "severe punishment of a long term of imprisonment which, in an appropriate case, could be a sentence of life imprisonment";[2] I agree with this approach. With the abolition of the death penalty society needs the firm assurance that the unreformed recidivist murderer or rapist will not be released from prison, however long the sentence served by the prisoner may have been, if there is a reasonable possibility that the prisoner will repeat the crime. Society needs to be assured that in such cases the state will see to it that such a recidivist will remain in prison permanently.
[171]I appreciate the concern of not wishing to anticipate the issue as to whether life imprisonment, however executed and administered, is constitutional or not. At the same time I do not believe that the two issues can be kept in watertight separate juristic compartments. If the death penalty is to be abolished, as I believe it must, society is entitled to the assurance that the state will protect it from further harm from the convicted unreformed recidivist killer or rapist. If there is an individual right not to be put to death by the criminal justice system there is a correlative obligation on the state, through the criminal justice system, to protect society from once again being harmed by the unreformed recidivist killer or rapist. The right and the obligation are inseparably part of the same constitutional state compact.
[172]Article 102 of the German Basic Law declares that capital punishment is abolished. The German Federal Constitutional Court considered the constitutionality of life imprisonment in 1977[3]. The provision in the criminal code which prescribes life imprisonment for murder was challenged on the basis that it conflicted with the protection afforded to human dignity (art 1.1) and personal freedom (art 2.2) in the German Basic Law. The Court upheld the law on the basis that it was not shown that the serving of a sentence of life imprisonment leads to irreparable physical or psychological damage to the prisoner's health. The Court did however find that the right to human dignity demands a humane execution of the sentence. This meant that the existing law, which made provision for executive pardon, had to be replaced by a law laying down objective criteria for the release of prisoners serving life sentences. In the course of its judgment, the Court made clear that there is nothing constitutionally objectionable to executing a life sentence in full in cases where the prisoner does not meet the criteria. At page 242 of the judgment the Court said:
"Die Menschenwürde wird auch dann nicht verletzt, wenn der Vollzug der Strafe wegen fortdauernder Gefährlichkeit des Gefangenen notwendig ist und sich aus diesem Grunde eine Begnadigung verbietet. Es ist der staatlichen Gemeinschaft nicht verwehrt, sich gegen einen gemeingefährlichen
