Papua New Guinea residents offer to carry out executions The Commonwealth nation introduced capital punishment in 1991 but has been unable to decide between hanging, gas or lethal injections and has not yet executed any prisoners. The death penalty can be given for the crimes of treason, piracy and murder. The justice minister, Kerenga Kua, is seeking to broaden the scope of the death penalty to try to reduce the country's soaring crime rates. Facing pressure over the country's failure to kill the ten condemned prisoners, he told parliament he favoured Texas-style lethal injection and wants capital punishment to cover rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking. "While we have to consider the costs involved and the need to prepare the killing chambers, which will run into the millions, we have many Papua New Guineans who have already expressed their interest in carrying out the executions," he said. Mr Kua has blamed the courts for failing to condemn people to death and is consulting the United States on the most efficient and cost-effective way to conduct the executions. However, he said, lethal injections would cost about AUS$ 1 million - more than double the cost of a hanging. "We need to prepare things like chambers for that process," he said. Then we have to provide the funding. Capital punishment was ended in PNG in 1970, while the Pacific territory was still an Australian colony. The final person to be hanged was a prisoner hung by Australian authorities in 1954 after killing a fellow prisoner. Despite reinstating the death penalty, the country's cabinet decided in 2005 that hanging should not be used because it was cruel and inhumane.