Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment
- PART I WHAT IS A PENALTY OF DEATH: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN CONTEXT
- 1 The Green, Green Grass of Home
- 2 Did Anyone Die Here?
- 3 Capital Punishment as Homeowner's Insurance
- Part II ON THE MEANING OF DEATH AND PAIN IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES: VIEWING, WITNESSING, UNDERSTANDING
- Part III ABOLITIONIST DISCOURSES, ABOLITIONIST STRATEGIES, ABOLITIONIST DILEMMAS: TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES
- Index
3 - Capital Punishment as Homeowner's Insurance
The Rise of the Homeowner Citizen and the Fate of Ultimate Sanctions in Both Europe and the United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment
- PART I WHAT IS A PENALTY OF DEATH: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN CONTEXT
- 1 The Green, Green Grass of Home
- 2 Did Anyone Die Here?
- 3 Capital Punishment as Homeowner's Insurance
- Part II ON THE MEANING OF DEATH AND PAIN IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES: VIEWING, WITNESSING, UNDERSTANDING
- Part III ABOLITIONIST DISCOURSES, ABOLITIONIST STRATEGIES, ABOLITIONIST DILEMMAS: TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION: ULTIMATE SANCTIONS, CAPITAL CRIMES
The fate of capital punishment is often considered one of the decisive differences between Europe and the United States. In the analysis that follows, I argue that in important respects, the approach of both toward capital crimes are converging. This convergence may or may not arrive soon on the issue of execution of death sentences, but there is convergence on the increasing demand on both continents for “ultimate sanctions,” which I define as incapacitative imprisonment that ends either in an execution or a natural death in prison. My subject, however, is not LWOP, or specific sentencing laws at all, but instead a kind of citizenship, growing on both continents (at least before the financial crisis), which can be expected to coalesce as public support for ultimate sanctions against murderers (and perhaps some other categories of especially feared crimes like terrorism and child sexual abduction). The strength of this citizenship and public represents an important political constituency to sustain capital punishment where it exists, and to restore it should current restraints on executions weaken.
In previous work, I have argued that punitiveness in the United States has been a political project aimed at shoring up the legitimacy and efficacy of state power in a conjuncture where both fear of violent crime and mistrust of government have been persistent (if not continuous).
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- Information
- Is the Death Penalty Dying?European and American Perspectives, pp. 78 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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