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
1 - Capital punishment: improve it or remove it?
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
Figures vary somewhat on the number of countries that may be considered abolitionist, essentially because of differences over what constitutes de facto rather than de jure abolition. There is no dispute about the existence of an inexorable trend towards the elimination of capital punishment in national judicial systems during the twentieth century. While only a handful of countries had stopped executing offenders in 1900, by the beginning of the new century approximately two-thirds no longer impose capital punishment. In some cases, there are exceptions for war-related offences or treason. However, despite the progress it is worth remembering that, while seventy-four states out of the 195 states in the world have abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes, this represents only 14 per cent of the world's population, leaving 86 per cent of people living in countries where the death penalty is available.
The abolition of the death penalty stands as one of the great, albeit unfinished, triumphs of the post-Second World War human rights movement. The question we now face, at the dawn of the next century, is whether the trend will continue, or rather how to ensure it continues. I make no secret of my own view that the death penalty makes no constructive contribution to reducing the incidence of the crimes for which it is traditionally reserved. In fact, capital punishment merely perpetuates the pain and anger experienced by homicide victims' families and those employed to administer the process.
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- Information
- Capital PunishmentStrategies for Abolition, pp. 1 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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