Whatever Happened to the Death Penalty?
Files
Description
“(1) Auto da fe (2) Beating with clubs (3) Beheading: Decapitation (4) Blowing from cannon (5) Boiling (6) Breaking on the wheel (7) Burning (8) Burying alive (9) Crucifixion (10) Decimation (11) Dichotomy (12) Dismemberment (13) Drowning (14) Exposure to wild beasts etc. (15) Flaying alive (16) Flogging: Knout (17) Garrote (18) Guillotine (19) Hanging (20) Hari kari (21) Impalement (22) Iron Maiden (23) Peine Forte et Dure (24) Poisoning (25) Pounding in mortar (26) Precipitation (27) Pressing to death (28) Rack (29) Running the gauntlet (30) Shooting (31) Stabbing (32) Stoning (33) Strangling (34) Suffocation.” This is a list of execution methods compiled by a New York State Commission in 1888. The Commission had been charged with investigating the most humane and practical methods of carrying into effect the sentence of death. The Commission, and the state of New York, would eventually introduce a new item into the historical record: the electric chair—first used in Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890. There is a reason this list is so long. Capital punishment has been practiced in most known societies over the course of human history. One might say that, until quite recently, it was the historical norm, a cultural universal. But in modern liberal democracies - in societies like the Netherlands—the death penalty no longer exists. We rarely think of it, but this transformation is remarkable. The death penalty once formed an elementary particle of governmental power in every nation state. Today the practice is widely regarded as a shameful violation of human rights and is prohibited throughout most of the Western world. What happened? This answer is by no means simple. There are exceptions to the Western trend—the USA being the most notable—and outside the Western world the death penalty is still alive and well, especially in the Middle East and Asia. Even in the West, the direction of historical change is not always the same. But we can roughly sketch the overall arc of change and trace the social causes that brought about this remarkable development. In the early modern period—between about 1400 and 1700—newly-emergent state authorities took up the death penalty and accorded it a central role in the project of state building. Elaborate public ceremonies, horrifying execution techniques, and ritual proclamations were so many means to this end, with the most atrocious punishments being reserved for crimes of lese majesty and challenges to the state. By the mid-19th century, in a context of increasingly well-established and rationalized states, capital punishment's main purpose had altered, so that what had once been an instrument of rule, essential to state security, became an instrument of penal policy, focused on the narrower goals of doing justice and controlling crime. As its functions changed, so too did its forms. The death penalty came to be formatted as a penal sanction rather than a political spectacle. Its focus came to center on criminal rather than political offences. Its executions came to be more swiftly administered, not in the political space of the town square but in the penal space of the jail yard. It sought to minimize bodily pain rather than maximize it, as before. By the late 20th century, in the very different context of the modern liberal democratic welfare state, capital punishment had ceased to be a central measure of crime control and had become increasingly rare and controversial. By century's end, it had been abolished by all the developed Western nations other than America, and by several non-Western nations besides. The widespread use of the death penalty - in earlier centuries in the West, and in much of the world still today—should hardly surprise us. If we set aside contemporary moral qualms and political objections to its use, it is easy to see why capital punishment has been so important. As a political weapon and a penal instrument, the death penalty has an irresistible power. Putting political enemies, serious wrongdoers, and dangerous individuals to death is an obvious, effective, and efficient way for authorities to eliminate the threat such individuals represent. Imposing a death penalty on law breakers permits authorities to proclaim their power, impress onlookers, exact revenge, undo pollution, restore social order and send a warning to would-be offenders. Nor has this self-evident efficacy diminished in the contemporary period. If swiftly applied, frequently utilized, and imposed with the requisite amount of pain and publicity—as it still is in places such as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore—the death penalty retains much of its power as a penal and political instrument.
Source Publication
Beyond the Death Penalty: Reflections on Punishment
Source Editors/Authors
Hans Nelen, Jacques Claessen
Publication Date
2012
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "Whatever Happened to the Death Penalty?" (2012). Faculty Chapters. 657.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/657
