Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on the contributors
- 1 Capital punishment: improve it or remove it?
- 2 International law and the death penalty: reflecting or promoting change?
- 3 Doctors and the death penalty: ethics and a cruel punishment
- 4 Replacing the death penalty: the vexed issue of alternative sanctions
- 5 Religion and the death penalty in the United States: past and present
- 6 On botched executions
- 7 Death as a penalty in the Shari'ā
- 8 Abolishing the death penalty in the United States: an analysis of institutional obstacles and future prospects
- 9 Capital punishment in the United States: moratorium efforts and other key developments
- 10 The experience of Lithuania's journey to abolition
- 11 The death penalty in South Korea and Japan: ‘Asian values’ and the debate about capital punishment?
- 12 Georgia, former republic of the USSR: managing abolition
- 13 Capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean: colonial inheritance, colonial remedy?
- 14 Public opinion and the death penalty
- 15 Capital punishment: meeting the needs of the families of the homicide victim and the condemned
- Index
15 - Capital punishment: meeting the needs of the families of the homicide victim and the condemned
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on the contributors
- 1 Capital punishment: improve it or remove it?
- 2 International law and the death penalty: reflecting or promoting change?
- 3 Doctors and the death penalty: ethics and a cruel punishment
- 4 Replacing the death penalty: the vexed issue of alternative sanctions
- 5 Religion and the death penalty in the United States: past and present
- 6 On botched executions
- 7 Death as a penalty in the Shari'ā
- 8 Abolishing the death penalty in the United States: an analysis of institutional obstacles and future prospects
- 9 Capital punishment in the United States: moratorium efforts and other key developments
- 10 The experience of Lithuania's journey to abolition
- 11 The death penalty in South Korea and Japan: ‘Asian values’ and the debate about capital punishment?
- 12 Georgia, former republic of the USSR: managing abolition
- 13 Capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean: colonial inheritance, colonial remedy?
- 14 Public opinion and the death penalty
- 15 Capital punishment: meeting the needs of the families of the homicide victim and the condemned
- Index
Summary
Crime victims are too often ignored and, when remembered, too often exploited in the interest of political expediency. They are a constituency almost universally overlooked by the traditional abolitionist movement, thus proving a significant obstacle to the process of replacing the death penalty. Politicians the world over justify the retention of the death penalty, in part, because of their concerns about crime victims, though frequently on closer examination little or no provision for them is made by the state.
Consistent with the observations made in the introductory chapter, it will come as no surprise to learn that the bulk of information that has developed around victims and the death penalty is based on the scholarship and experience of the United States. It is especially important therefore when evaluating the experience of the US with regard to victims that one takes care to distinguish between what does and does not ‘work’ and its relevance or otherwise to influencing victim services models worldwide. Justice cannot be done in this chapter to the wealth of scholarship dedicated to the issue of crime victims in general, so it will restrict its review and analysis to the literature dedicated to the issues of victims and their relationship to the death penalty and punishments in general. There has been an almost exponential growth in victim research and services over the past two to three decades with international and regional bodies such as the United Nations and the European Commission dedicating research and resources to improved practice and guidelines.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Capital PunishmentStrategies for Abolition, pp. 332 - 358Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004