Beheading is a bit of a blunt instrument
As these are, naturally enough, crimes in themselves it kind of begs the question: who gets to decide? As tools of repression, they have been tried with varying degrees of barbarity throughout history, in Russian, German, Chinese, South African and Cambodian prisons, gulags or concentration camps, often for political reasons.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan also linked this, ahem, humanitarian solution to religious fanaticism, where they got to play some nasty notion of God in football stadia and public arenas.
Saddam introduced some nice refinements like gas and chemical weapons to quieten dissent among the Kurds and marsh Arabs and secular apostates.
Other than that, it might work. And if we manage to separate people from their most prized possession, namely their heads, then there is every likelihood that they will not re-offend. Unless, of course, they should happen to have two heads or a brass neck, or should spawn terrorists like the 9/11 fanatics who all just happen to have been born and educated in some cussed Nirvana of religious and social engineering, namely Mr Cussen's exemplary Saudi Arabia.
Richard Dowling,
Coote Street,
Mountrath,
Co Laois.
