History
Capital Punishment in UK
Capital punishment in the UK has a long history, with various methods such as hanging, beheading, and later, the use of the guillotine. The death penalty was abolished for murder in 1965 and completely abolished in 1998. The UK's approach to capital punishment has evolved over time, reflecting changing societal attitudes and a growing emphasis on human rights.
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12 Key excerpts on "Capital Punishment in UK"
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 5 Capital Punishment Capital punishment , the death penalty , or execution is the killing of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences . The term capital originates from Latin capitalis , literally regarding the head (Latin caput ). Hence, a capital crime was originally one punished by the severing of the head. Capital punishment has in the past been practiced in virtually every society, although currently only 58 nations actively practice it, with 95 countries abolishing it (the remainder having not used it for 10 years or allowing it only in exceptional circumstances such as wartime). It is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states, and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region. In the European Union member states, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment. Today, most countries are considered by Amnesty International as abolitionist, which allowed a vote on a nonbinding resolution to the UN to promote the abolition of the death penalty. However, over 60% of the world's population live in countries where executions take place insofar as the four most populous countries in the world (the People's Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia) apply the death penalty and all of them voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly in 2008. History Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies— both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. In most places that practice capital punishment it is reserved for murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice.
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- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 5 Capital Punishment Capital punishment , the death penalty , or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences . The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis , literally regarding the head. Hence a capital crime was originally one punished by severing the head from the body. Capital punishment has in the past been practiced by most societies (one notable exception being Kievan Rus; modern Russia does have the death penalty), although currently only 58 nations actively practice it, with 95 countries having abolished it (the remainder having not used it for 10 years or allowing it only in exceptional circumstances such as wartime). It is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states, and positions can vary within a single political ideology or cultural region. In the European Union member states, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment. As of 2010 Amnesty International considered most countries abolitionist. The UN General Assembly has adopted, in 2007 and 2008, non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventual abolition. Although many nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world's population live in countries where executions take place, inasmuch as the People's Republic of China, India, the United States of America and Indonesia, the four most populous countries in the world, continue to apply the death penalty (although in India and Indonesia it is used only rarely). Each of these four nations voted against the General Assembly resolutions. History Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies— both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent.
eBook - ePubCapital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain
Audience, Justice, Memory
- Lizzie Seal(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
41 The rest of the chapter provides contextual background in relation to the operation of capital punishment in Britain since the late nineteenth century.The late nineteenth centuryFollowing the publication of the report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1866, hanging ceased to be a fully public event in 1868 and was from then on to take place within prison grounds. The exclusion of the crowd from the execution scene on the one hand ‘appeased [the] squeamishness’,42 that was part of the developing Victorian middle-class culture of sensibility, and on the other meant that hanging could be carried out as a more orderly, bureaucratic affair, over which the state had firmer control.43 By the mid-nineteenth century, spectating an execution had become ‘uncivilised’, with the sight of bodily punishment increasingly regarded as repugnant.44 This did not necessarily signal greater sympathy with the condemned but rather the need to establish new, respectable standards of conduct.45 Alongside the sensibility of squeamishness were middle-class and elite fears of the ‘dangerous classes’ of the sort that were likely to congregate at a hanging. Public order was easier to secure by reducing opportunities for festive, raucous behaviour, and by attempting to remove the danger that the crowd would identify with the condemned rather than his or her punishers.46 Belief in the need to control the misbehaviour of the urban working class was demonstrated by a hardening of penal measures in the 1860s.47 At the same time, ‘murderers came to be seen as less than human’, brutes from whom the respectable classes needed protection.48
eBook - PDFHistories of Crime
Britain 1600-2000
- Anne-Marie Kilday, David Nash(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
9 Execution as Punishment in England: 1750–2000 Judith Rowbotham 1. Introduction Capital punishment is the most extreme of the legislatively endorsed retributions dispensed by society to those convicted of offences deemed a serious threat to the community. This chapter examines execution in England in this socio-legal context, from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. 1 It charts the radical shifts in attitudes towards this punishment strategy that mark this period; one which witnessed a clear reconsideration of the moral case for using the death penalty but also scru-tinised the manner of executions. Today in the UK, parliament effectively accepts that execution is no longer morally justifiable in a ‘civilised’ state. 2 Execution was an intrinsic element relating to the wider objectives of punishment, with debates stretching back to ancient Greece – debates that have been continually reinvigorated. These established that the offence needed practical as well as moral strategies in order to redress the balance and achieve justice. In that context, the very irreversibility of the death penalty established it as the ultimate sanction. Judeo-Christian thought added the exhortation in Genesis to justify the death penalty. 3 Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought reconsidered the purpose of punishment. This occurred amongst thinkers from Hegel to Nietzsche, and most notably in recent times in the ideas of Foucault. In his seminal work, Discipline and Punish , Foucault identified the shifting focus, from public to private and from the corporal aspects to the mental and moral aspects of punishment. 4 The ethics of capital punishment provided a significant problem for eighteenth-century thinkers, at a time when society was reimagined in a more ‘civilised’ format. Utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham stressed a more E XECUTION AS P UNISHMENT IN E NGLAND 181 compassionate, redemptive approach to wrongdoing.
eBook - PDFInternational Human Rights
A Survey
- Cher Weixia Chen, Alison Dundes Renteln(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
5 The Death Penalty and Cruel, Degrading, and Inhuman Punishment The death sentence is a form of punishment which has been used throughout history by different societies. It has long been the subject of controversy. As societies became more enlightened, they restricted the offences for which this penalty could be imposed. The movement away from the death penalty gained momentum during the second half of the present century with the growth of the abolitionist movement. State v. Makwanyane (1995) 5.1 Theoretical Controversy: Pros Versus Cons With so many societies having their own criminal justice systems, deciding when the punishment fits the crime can indeed be challenging. This chapter focuses on the death penalty and other forms of cruel, degrading, and inhuman punishment. According to Amnesty International (2021), by the end of 2020, 108 countries had abolished the death penalty in law for all crimes, and 144 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice. It is fair to say that the use of the death penalty has declined, but it has certainly not disappeared. It remains a highly contested social and political issue (Johnson, 2010). Both sides of the death penalty have worked hard to push policy on the issue in their favor (United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2014). In the United States (US), it is an issue decided by the states, 28 of which in 2021 permitted the death penalty and has been allowed, in general, by the US Supreme Court. As a consequence, most organizations related to the death penalty in the US are dedicated to abolishing it; the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty is one such organization. Public opinion in the US has traditionally been split on the issue, but the death penalty has become less popular: 60 percent of those surveyed in 2019 preferred life in prison to execution (Jones, 2019).
eBook - PDF- Clifton D. Bryant(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
CAPITA L PUNISHMEN T IN THE UNITE D STATE S STEPHANIE PICOLO MANZI A lthough a majority of the crimes once punishable by death in the United States a re no longer punishable in that manner, as of late 2002, 3,697 me n and wome n were housed on death rows in America n prisons. Th e United States remains the only Wester n democracy that takes the lives of individuals wh o have been convicte d of what a re know n as capital offenses . In this chapter, I provide som e historical background on the use of the death penalty in the United States and a demo - graphic breakdown of the population of those wh o a re at present sentenced to death. I conclude the chapter with an overvie w of som e of the controversial issues related to the use of capital punishment , including the executio n of men - tally r e t a r d ed persons and the executio n of individuals wh o a re innocent of the crimes for whic h they have been convicted . HISTORY AND BACKGROUND OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN AMERICA Whe n the first European settlers arrived in colonial America , they brought with them the British tradition of capital pun- ishment. Th e earliest recorded use of the death penalty in the Ne w World was in the colony of Virginia in 1622, whe n one Captain George Kendall was executed for the crime of trea- son. Th e death penalty was accepted as just punishmen t for a variety of offense s in the America n colonies, but there a re tw o striking differences betwee n the use of the death penalty in Britain at the tim e and the use of the death penalty in the colonies. Th e first difference is found in the numbe r of crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed . B y 1760, Great Britain considered more than 100 offense s to be punishable by death, whereas the laws of the majority of the colonies listed fewe r than a doze n capital offense s each.
eBook - PDF- William J. Chambliss(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Geor-gia, which temporarily barred most executions in the United States, capital punishment has been used with regularity since colonial times, for a variety of offenses. Today, state and federal laws, as well as the Military Code of Justice, recognize numerous capital offenses. By and large, such offenses include either premeditated murder and/or treason as a necessary part of a capital charge. Beginning in the 1990s, several states passed laws that allowed for aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, hijacking, and other crimes to be punishable by the death penalty, but the recent 2008 Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana has limited the use of the death pen-alty to crimes resulting in the death of the victim, and crimes against the state (i.e., treason or espionage). Within the 20th and early 21st centuries, the use of capital punishment has ebbed and flowed in relation to a variety of political, economic, legal, and social considerations. In the first two decades of the 20th century— buttressed by a strong abolitionist movement—the use of capital punish-ment declined, and several states banned its use altogether. The influence of abolitionism waned in the 1920s and 1930s, however, in response to fears of communism following the Russian Revolution, the rise of Pro-hibition and corresponding organized crime, and the Great Depression, and the 1930s saw the highest rates of executions on record, at about 167 per year. Support for capital punishment remained strong throughout World War II and the 1940s, only to shift again within the context of the postwar boom Capital Punishment/Death Penalty 7 of the 1950s. The difference between the two decades is notable, where the number of executions decreased by almost half, from 1,289 in the 1940s to 715 in the 1950s.
eBook - PDFPublic Executions
The Death Penalty and the Media
- Christopher S. Kudlac(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
37 Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement. By the 1700s in England, 222 crimes were punishable by death. 38 However, because of the severity of the death penalty, many juries would not convict defendants if the offense were not serious, making executions at the time quite rare. 39 This led to re- form of England’s death penalty early in the eighteenth century when the death penalty was eliminated for over 100 of the 222 crimes punishable by death. Public hangings were abolished in 1868, and eventually the death penalty was eliminated all together in 1964. 40 In America, capital punishment has been a fixture since the arrival of European settlers. But capital punishment was never used as extensively in the American colonies as in England. The first known execution in the new colonies took place in 1608: Captain George Kendall of Virginia was executed for spying on behalf of Spain. 41 In 1622 the first legal execution of a criminal was Daniel Frank in Virginia for the crime of theft. The most famous use of the death penalty in early America was in Salem, Massachu- setts, during the witch trials in 1692–1694. 20 people, including 14 women, were condemned as witches or collaborators and hanged. 42 Early reforms of the death penalty occurred from 1776–1800. Thomas Jefferson and four others proposed a law, A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments in Cases Heretofore Capital (1779), recommending that the death penalty be used only for treason and murder. After a heated debate, the legislature defeated the bill by one vote. 43 Organizations were formed in different colonies for the abolition of the death penalty and to relieve poor prison conditions.
- Rachel E. Bennett(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Springer Open(Publisher)
29 Capital punishment has a long and storied global history. However, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have received particularly rich and varied analyses as historians of Western Europe have explored how this period was one of discussion, debate and transition in how the death sentence was legislated for and carried out. Despite studies of capital punishment advancing our understanding of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century penal practices as well as having the potential to offer a unique perspective of the period’s social and cultural history, examinations of Scotland’s capital punishment history have remained limited. There have been acknowledgements of the country’s lesser recourse to the death sentence, especially when compared to England, which perhaps also goes some way towards explaining this relative dearth in historical attention. 1 In addition, the lack of research into Scotland’s criminal history has also been attributed to the dif fculties in readily comparing its legal and court systems to practices in England. 2 Chapter 3 will provide an in-depth exploration of three key periods in Scotland’s use of the death sentence and will examine the importance of factors such as geography, unrest and public discourse in shaping judicial opinion and the punishment of certain crimes at certain times. However, this chapter will frst examine the nuances of the Scottish legal system that impacted upon the use of the death sentence, and provide a crucial study of how geographical location and population growth and distri-bution impacted upon the long-term trends in Scotland’s use of capital punishment between 1740 and 1834. Furthermore, it will explore the CHAPTER 2 Capital Punishment and the Scottish Criminal Justice System © The Author(s) 2018 R.E. Bennett, Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740–1834 , Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62018-3_2
eBook - PDFMurder and Mayhem
Crime in Twentieth-Century Britain
- David Nash, Anne-Marie Kilday(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
Punishment: The Death Penalty and Incarceration 253 frequently based on the views of the reformers writing at the time, tended to see these changes in punishment in terms of progress. 51 The practices of the past were barbaric, inefficient and haphazard; the ‘new’ system was measured and rational. These changes were part of the development of a modern civilised society. As Emsley observes, until the late 1970s this was ‘the usual narrative of penal history … inspired by liberal and humani-tarian ideals.’ 52 Brutal public displays of punishment were barbaric and excessive and this needed to be replaced by a new system which was more measured and ordered – one that only executed certain offenders and did so in private, away from the eyes of public – ultimately leading to the total abolition of the death penalty. 53 This system of punishment would be replaced by the prison, not the disorderly and diseased gaols of the past, but a new prison, an orderly and functional environment where prisoners were given the basics for survival – food, shelter, sanitation – and were put to labour and given religious and moral education through which their behaviour could be altered. 54 During the 1960s and ‘70s, a number of writers challenged many aspects of the traditional account. Notably they were concerned with power and social control, many emerging from or influenced by the Marxist social histories of the time. Collectively, these accounts explored questions of power and power relations. They sought to understand the economic and philanthropic motives of ‘reformers’, as well as the interests of the governing class, state power, authority and regulation. Historians such as Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and Vic Gatrell argued that the law was deeply biased when it came to class and this was exemplified in cases of capital punishment and the operation of mercy.
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- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter 8 Capital Punishment in the United States Death penalty statutes in the United States Color key: No current death penalty statute Retentionist, not applied since at least 1967 Retentionist, has performed execution since 1976 Retains in law; either statute/method ruled unconstitutional, penalty abolished only prospectively, or abolition has yet to take effect Capital punishment in the United States , in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolution the Anglo-American common law was maintained in the United States, capital punishment with it. The methods of execution and the crimes subject to the penalty vary by jurisdiction and have varied widely throughout time. Thirty-four jurisdictions have banned it by law, others have suspended its use, and others are trying to expand its applicability. There were 37 executions in the United States in 2008, the lowest number since 1994 (largely due to lethal injection litigation revolving around a now resolved constitutional question). There were 46 executions in 2010, 44 by lethal injection, one by electric chair (in Virginia), and one by firing squad (in Utah). ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Capital punishment has often been a contentious social issue in the United States; while historically, a large majority of the American public has favored it in cases of murder, the extent of this support has varied over time, and there has long been strong opposition from some sectors of the population. While public support today is substantially lower than it was in the 1980s and '90s, it has been largely static over the past decade.
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- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Publications(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 1 Capital Punishment in the United States Death penalty statutes in the United States Color key: No current death penalty statute Statute or method declared unconstitutional Not applied since 1976 Has performed execution since 1976 Capital punishment in the United States varies by jurisdiction. In practice it applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder or contract killing. Capital punishment existed in the colonies that predated the United States and that were later annexed to the United States under the laws of their mother countries and continued to have effect in the states and territories they became. The methods of execution and the crimes subject to the penalty vary by jurisdiction and have varied widely throughout time. Some jurisdictions have banned it, others have suspended its use, but others are trying to expand its applicability. There were 37 executions in 2008. That is the lowest number since 1994 (largely due to lethal injection litigation). There were 52 executions in the United States in 2009, 51 by lethal injection and 1 by electric chair (Virginia). ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Public opinion in the US in recent years has been overwhelmingly supportive of the death penalty; a 2010 Gallup poll showed 64% of Americans in favor in cases of murder, and 29% opposed. The highest level of support was 80% in 1994 (16% opposed), and the lowest was 42% in 1966 (47% opposed). When given a choice between the death penalty and life imprisonment without parole, 49% favor the death penalty while 46% favor life imprisonment. Controversy Capital punishment is a controversial issue, with many prominent organizations and individuals participating in the debate. The United States is one of only three industrialized democracies that still have it.
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