The European Union doesn’t allow capital punishment. And Estonia is a member.

But awareness that you can’t have your cake and eat it is generally low in this country. In other words, agreeing that EU membership necessarily makes the death penalty impossible in Estonia is not the first thing the locals will do when asked to comment.

This refusal to see that concessions are a necessary consequence of membership in exclusive organisations like the EU and NATO is very nicely expressed in the current refugee “debate” as well.

The reasons for the partly really radical opinions expressed on both issues aren’t really clear. One good guess though is that there’s an information deficit.

Bias and omission in the news

Delfi.ee is the Estonian’s favourite news source. The world, believe it or not, currently ranks 15th of all the topic blocks on the site. Knowing how radically these sites are driven by marketing, popularity and clicks, it’s easy to guess how close to readers’ hearts the events in the rest of the world really are.

Without passing judgment on people’s individual interests, a clear consequence of this is that things are usually looked at from an exclusively local point of view. The rest of the world’s experiences with whatever topic is currently discussed don’t enter into it.

That explains why a supposed 70% of the Estonian population say that they’re in favour of capital punishment. Chances are they haven’t heard of the problems other countries are having with it, or never had a reason to question any of it.

And that’s not the fault of the Estonian general public. It’s the fault of the continuously one-sided approach of the people making the news.

The popular thing to do is to blame the individual for a perceived lack of information or enthusiasm for the importance of a topic. In some cases this makes sense, of course — but in most cases, access is just as big an issue as ignorance.

The Estonian media — and yes, they’ll have to put up with a comparison to the media abroad! — are mainly interested in Estonia. And no, it’s not like that in every other country. At least in this regard, Estonia really is pretty special.

They have a clear tendency towards dry and technocratic reporting of current events in this country. There’s generally little context provided. Critical opinions aren’t popular — not so much because dissent isn’t tolerated, but much rather because conflict isn’t what the local media are good at.

Also, the media aren’t as far removed from politics and business as elsewhere. A quite interesting way of following Estonian party politics, for instance, is to read that strange kind of leaked letter one party member might send to another to wash their dirty laundry in public.

Anyone looking for broader context where the Estonian media meet the world will notice a peculiar filter. News.err.ee, Estonianworld.com and News.postimees.ee paint a picture of this country that’s radically different from how it really is.

If you’re a keen reader — which would really surprise me, as their reporting is mind-numbingly one-sided and in the case of Postimees in such radically diabolic English that it makes you want to offer them proofreading services for free — you’re very familiar with their usual topics of choice, which are:

Tech start-ups — things Estonia is very good at — how Estonia helps others — Estonian composers winning prizes — Estonian artists on display in some big city — Estonian history — how Estonia is 35th in some global ranking somewhere — how Estonia got better results in some kind of test than a bigger country — etc.

This kind of reporting is kept surprisingly clean. This extends to the moderation of comments on articles. In my own experience, if you submit a comment that is entirely appropriately worded, but paints the institutional side of the Estonian state in a bad light, it won’t get through.

Call someone a “motherfucker” in the heat of the discussion, or rant on about how underdeveloped and barbaric the Africans are, and it will pass all the checks.

There’s an inherent bias in a lot of the local public relations and media work. Which is another reason why you should take the 70% in favour of capital punishment with considerable caution.

Bias and omission in the polls

The local pollsters are not above all doubt. There are a whole number of reasons why. They’re too close to politics to be considered independent, for one thing. Then there’s the matter of method. Estonia’s a hard place to run polls in, as you can’t just call landlines and ask questions.

No landlines means no easily available demographic data, which again means that the pollsters can’t always be sure their reference frame is worth much.

Using anonymous data sets and the Internet, you can’t really rely on your results much either. Things are changing too quickly, and people’s attitudes change massively whenever they feel protected by the anonymity of the web.

In any case, the margin of error is high. There are plenty of elements involved that can be tinkered with — the sample, the questions. Then there’s nonresponse bias, response bias and — especially! — coverage bias.

Beyond all that, there’s the occasionally rather warped perception of what makes sense and what doesn’t. After elections, believe it or not, this country doesn’t have exit polls. Probably part of the category where everything ends up the local bigshots think Estonia’s “just too small” for.

If only it could all just go away

Conflict and debate aren’t popular here. People prefer to settle things the quiet way — or not settle them at all.

It’s a local trait. Elsewhere people hop up and down and rant and shout at each other; here, conflict is dealt with differently.

The distinct impression you’re getting as a foreigner living here is that often there’s the silent wish that it would all just go away. The preferred way of dealing with a problem here is to ignore it until it solves itself.

Which it sometimes does, actually more often than you’d think. Something plenty of us expats only learn a good while after getting here.

It’s no wonder then to see that the arguments in favour of capital punishment develop along similar lines. Discussing the matter in the less excitable forums here, you’ll quickly find that behind most pro arguments is the wish that bad people would just disappear.

The unwillingness to put up with them is extreme.

And inasmuch as this reflects a local character trait, exactly who or what should be in charge of making bad people disappear isn’t anything they’d want to worry about.

Following the same logic, philosophical or ethical debate of the subject is seen as a waste of time — or again, something they won’t put up with.

Introducing capital punishment would contradict the way things are done here

Part of what makes life in Estonia interesting are its contradictions. People here justify a lot with their generally technocratic and sober approach to things. If it’s too expensive, don’t do it. If it causes a fuss, don’t do it. If it’s ineffective, don’t do it.

At least, that’s the way they like to be seen.

At the same time, they’re not hell-bent on saving money when it comes to what they drive, for instance. They may fight over every cent to be spent or not on a kindergarten, but parliament won’t question the government’s need for new Audis, BMWs, Mercs and Land Cruisers for the ministers.

Capital punishment could thus only ever be reintroduced here if a certain political group could gain a benefit. Because if not for its intangible political advantages, it’s exactly the kind of undertaking the supposedly very modern and efficient Estonian state has been trying to eradicate.

In fact, capital punishment is an outright anti-Estonian concept because:

It makes too much noise. Upon reintroduction, there would be a very vocal reaction against it by certain groups. In fact, who says that agitators like Nochnoy Dozor wouldn’t use this opposition against it to their own ends? Also, international reactions would be bad for business. And Estonia’s government wants things to be good for business.

There’s too much uncertainty. The latest study set the US’ margin of error in sentencing people to death at 4.1%. The same study also pointed out that since 1978, an estimated 36% of all people sentenced to death needed to be removed from death row due to shortcomings of their trials.

And even though it’s absolutely possible that the Estonian courts would do a much better job, the risk of making costly mistakes and having never-ending appeals on their hands will keep Riigikogu from making the experiment.

It simply costs an ungodly amount of money. You have to keep a group of prisoners separated from the rest, which requires special institutions. Take the example of Florida: There, the cost of a single execution is currently estimated to be about $3.2m. If you include the cost of the whole death penalty system, it’s more like $24m per execution. In a simplified mode of counting, that’s 200 ministerial Audis.

Beyond that, US states generally report that the cost of a trial where the death penalty is sought is about 30% higher than a case going for life in prison. The plain truth is that the death penalty is more expensive than anything else —

Which neutralises another very popular argument in the still relatively fresh debate here, namely that the public shouldn’t have to pay for the maintenance of murderers. Well, turns out maintaining them is cheaper than terminating them.

In short, if just these three points were common knowledge in this country, you could forget the 70% in favour found by the poll.

Remains to say that better journalism would help as much as more explanation on the part of public institutions of less popular subjects. But there’s no real sign of change — yet.