Overview

The 4th edition of this authoritative study, now written jointly with Carolyn Hoyle, brings up-to-date developments in the movement to abolish the death penalty worldwide. It draws on Roger Hood's experience as consultant to the United Nations for the UN Secretary General's five-yearly surveys of capital punishment and on the latest information from a wide range non-governmental organizations and the academic literature. Not only have more countries abolished capital punishment, but amongst those that continue to retain it, the majority have been carrying out fewer executions. Legal challenges to mandatory capital punishment have been successful, as has the movement to abolish the death penalty for those who commit a capital crime when under the age of 18. This edition has more to say about the prospects that China will restrict and control the number of executions 'on the road to abolition'. Yet, despite such advances, this book reveals many human rights abuses where the death penalty still exists. In some countries a wide range of crimes are still subject to capital punishment, and the authorities often fail to meet the safeguards embodied in international human rights treaties to safeguard those facing the death penalty. There is evidence of police abuse, unfair trials, lack of access to competent defence counsel, excessive periods of time spent in horrible conditions on 'death row', and public, painful forms of execution. The authors engage with the latest debates on the realities of capital punishment, especially its justification as a uniquely effective deterrent; whether it can ever be administered equitably, without discrimination or error, and what influence relatives of victims should have in sentencing and public debate. For the first time it also discusses the problem of devising an alternative to capital punishment; especially, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

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9780199228461

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Reviews

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 indispensible 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 informaion 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

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 indispensible 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 informaion on this grim subject. The Commonwealth Lawyer.

"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 indispensible 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 informaion 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"

Author Information

Carolyn Hoyle, D.Phil, is a Fellow of Green College and Reader in Criminology at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford.

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