Overview

The fifth edition of this highly praised study charts and explains the progress that continues to be made towards the goal of worldwide abolition of the death penalty. The majority of nations have now abolished the death penalty and the number of executions has dropped in almost all countries where abolition has not yet taken place. Emphasising the impact of international human rights principles and evidence of abuse, the authors examine how this has fuelled challenges to the death penalty and they analyse and appraise the likely obstacles, political and cultural, to further abolition. They discuss the cruel realities of the death penalty and the failure of international standards always to ensure fair trials and to avoid arbitrariness, discrimination and conviction of the innocent: all violations of the right to life. They provide further evidence of the lack of a general deterrent effect; shed new light on the influence and limits of public opinion; and argue that substituting for the death penalty life imprisonment without parole raises many similar human rights concerns. This edition provides a strong intellectual and evidential basis for regarding capital punishment as undeniably cruel, inhuman and degrading. Widely relied upon and fully updated to reflect the current state of affairs worldwide, this is an invaluable resource for all those who study the death penalty and work towards its removal as an international goal.

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9780198701736

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Reviews

Review from previous edition The skill with which this material is brought together and evaluated from all over the world makes this book a documentary masterpiece...it is also an important contribution to the general theory of deterrence. Professor Heike Jung, Zeitschrift fur Strafvollzug und Straffalligenhilfe Its rigorous scholarship and the breadth of its coverage are hugely impressive features; its claim to worldwide coverage is no idle boast. This can fairly lay claim to being the closest thing to a definitive source-book on this important subject. Paul Craig, Public Law This current edition of the series is an indispensable resource for serious students of the death penalty anywhere. It is also well written and happily devoid of academic pretension. We are long past the era when anyone could argue that trends in other nations are of no importance to domestic death penalty policy, and this is as true in the United States as in the PRC and Rwanda...What Hood and Hoyle provide their readers is a careful sifting of data together with a level of analysis beyond the capacity of resources like Amnesty International. Punishment & Society 11 (2), 2009 The prose is polished and eminently readable. The scholarship is what one expects from two top Oxford academics. The book is much more than an update of the third edition. It contains new chapters and develops subjects that were not treated in any detail by Professor Hood in the past. Its message is inspiring and its arguments are devastating. The fourth edition of The Death Penalty, A Worldwide Perspective book belongs in the library of all the readers of this journal. William A. Schabas, Human Rights Quarterly 2009 It is important to acknowledge that the book is not simply a scholarly masterpiece in the purely academic sense...this work constitutes a major contribution to the real world of punishing the most serious offenders...It is both masterly and magisterial and, especially for those who have a genuine interest in the subject, indispensible. Prof Barry Mitchell, Justice of the Peace Vol 172 This fourth edition in 2008, takes the work to greater heights of being the last word on a worldwide perspective on the death penalty. No book on the subject gives such up-to-date authentic information on this grim subject. The Commonwealth Lawyer. ...provide(s) a wealth of information, analysis and strategic advice on abolition from an international and comparative perspective...It constitutes an exhaustive and devastating critique of the way in which capital punishment functions currently Roger S Clark, Criminal Law Forum

This book is a remarkable achievement and will appeal not just to those studying or working in this area, but to anyone who is interested in learning about the death penalty, based on the facts. Seema Kandelia, Nordic Journal of Human Rights

Author Information

Professor Roger Hood is Professor Emeritus of Criminology at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College. He took his Ph.D. at the Law Faculty of the University of Cambridge at the Institute of Criminology, and is a Doctor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford. From 1973 to 2003 he was Director of the Oxford Centre for Criminology. In 1986 he received the Sellin-Glueck Award of the American Society of Criminology for 'Distinguished International Contributions to Criminology'; in 2011 the Cesare Beccaria Medal from the International Society of Social Defence and Humane Criminal Policy; and in 2012 the ESC European Criminology Award 'for a lifetime contribution as a European criminologist'. As consultant to the United Nations, he prepared the Secretary-General's 5th, 6th, and 7th Quinquennial reports on capital punishment. Professor Carolyn Hoyle, Director of the Centre for Criminology, has been at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology since 1991. She has published empirical and theoretical research on a number of criminological topics including domestic violence, policing, restorative justice, the death penalty, and miscarriages of justice. With Dr Mai Sato, she is currently conducting research into applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission concerning alleged miscarriages of justice in the UK.

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