Capital Punishment[一].pptVIP

Capital Punishment Outline of Lecture How do we analyse punishment? Penal Evolution American Exceptionalism? Cultural structure of death penalty Methods Responsibility for death Rehabilitation or Revenge? Cultural Analysis of Capital Punishment Can not assume that death penalty and criminal law is above all about reducing crime What else does the death penalty do? Crime is not a natural category, but is historical. The ways in which we respond to crime are not given once and for all but are historical Penal punishment is therefore open to cultural analysis. Is it an expressive form of action? Historical Movement Away from Violent Punishment? General assumption that forms of punishment becoming less violent Durkheim-Penal Evolution Punishment is an emotive response to infringement of collective moral order Intensity of punishment decreases as societies become more complex. ‘Simple societies’- intense collective consciousness, intense emotions, and severe punishments ‘Complex societies’, weaker collective consciousness, less emotional, and punishments less severe. Foucault-Discipline and Punish Shifts in punishment reflect shifts in political organisation. Early 18th century: Public executions as public rituals, power of the sovereign enacted on bodies of the condemned. Late 19th century public executions decreased. Reflected shift from sovereign displays of violence, to more diffused form of disciplinary power. Object of punishment shifted from the body to the soul of the criminal. Aim less to avenge the crime and more to transform the soul Less punitive and more corrective. Privatisation of punishment Rise of imprisonment rather than execution. Capital punishment removed from public arena. American Exceptionalism How do we explain America? In US, by 19th century public executions were gradually outlawed European states abolished capital punishment after WWII UK 1973, France 1981, Germany 1987. Last executions occurred well before death penalty formally taken