No description available.

No description available.

Death row is a space across the United States that continues to expand, not only in numbers, but in the length of time inmates spend confined there. Fewer and fewer inmates are executed and death row is now increasingly the only punishment of capital convicts. This thesis examines the retributive and punitive treatment of death-sentenced offenders within that space and, by viewing that form of imprisonment as part of a communication process, it assesses the contribution it makes to the death penalty more generally in the USA to argue that death row imprisonment is crucial in sustaining the distinction of capital offenders, and the death penalty itself.Just as death row receives images from wider culture, it simultaneously generates images that complement and validate those it receives, of death sentenced offenders as dangerous monsters. These images, of offenders who require punitive detention, align with the dominant supportive rationale of capital punishment, retribution, and provide a basis for continued death penalty support in an era of declining executions.In the “hidden world” of death row, prisoners are left to be abused, mistreated, and denied privileges and opportunities available to other prisoners. The capital offender is presented by his death row incarceration as different from all other offenders serving other sentences, even life without parole. Death row incarceration communicates the worth and status of the condemned, presenting him as a dangerous, and dehumanised other, who needs to be securely detained, and restricted. Thus death row validates and justifies the cultural needs of capital punishment. Just as wider culture, including, specifically, the legal community, dictates a requirement for punitive detention, death row corroborates that image with its own in a self-affirming loop. Death row is therefore functional beyond the mere holding of offenders, it affirms cultural descriptions of the condemned and thus justifies, and provides support for, the very continuation of capital punishment itself.

Four of the contemporary practitioners of the death penalty in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, performed judicial executions on a regular basis between the years 1975 and 2009. Notwithstanding this similarity, the number of death sentences passed by courts that were subsequently reduced to a term of imprisonment through grants of clemency by the executive (or where the prisoner sentenced to death is exonerated by way of a pardon) varied remarkably between these jurisdictions over this 35-year period: some of these countries commuted the sentences of death row prisoners often, others rarely. In this DPhil thesis, I employ the methodology of comparative criminal justice to explore the discrepancies and similarities in capital clemency practice between these four Southeast Asian jurisdictions, seeking to document the known examples of clemency grants over the course of their modern history, and to investigate the reasons why retentionist countries exercise clemency at vastly different ‘rates’ in finalised capital cases. As clemency and pardon deliberations by the executive are usually performed in secret, academic study of the subject has remained scarce, and the suspected reasons behind death sentence commutations, and their relative frequency, are rarely analysed. My inductive, qualitative study in comparative criminal justice will attempt to address these deficiencies in analysis as they apply to four Southeast Asian countries that continue to practice capital punishment as a form of criminal sanction. Moving beyond Amnesty International’s simplistic observation that ‘nowhere in Asia has the ready availability of such clemency been marked’, I examine the intricacies of the clemency practice in each jurisdiction, and arrive at regional trends and patterns.

Sur le point de disparaître en France à la fin du XIXe siècle, la peine de mort connaît un regain à pai1ir de 1906. S'appuyant sur les émotions punitives présentes dans l'opinion publique ainsi que sur les discours criminologiques, le système judiciaire vise à l'élimination de certains accusés. La peine capitale reste cependant marginale dans l'ensemble de la répression pénale et ne punit qu'une minorité de crimes de sang considérés comme particulièrement atroces. Les condamnés à mort sont fréquemment issus des couches les plus misérables et les moins intégrées de la société. Les discours judiciaires, plaidoiries, réquisitoires, expertises, s'affrontent pour déterminer si ces individus peuvent disposer de circonstances atténuantes. Les fonctions de la peine de mort sont alors discutées: s'agit-il de faire un exemple, de venger, ou d'épurer le corps social? S'entremêlent alors considérations rationnelles et émotionnelles. Ces discussions ont lieu à deux niveaux : celui de la cour d'assises d'abord, où l'enjeu est de convaincre les citoyens siégeant comme jurés, celui de l'administration ministérielle et présidentielle ensuite, où l'enjeu est de décider d'une éventuelle grâce. Les condamnés à mort, en attendant que l'on statue sur leur sort, sont détenus dans des conditions particulièrement sévères, devant éviter évasion ou suicide. Leur temps et leur espace sont extrêmement normés, ce qui ne les empêche pas de les aménager à des fins qui leur sont propres. La préparation à mort s'inscrit dans des perspectives tant laïques et religieuses Le cas échéant, la décision d'exécution mobilise forces de l'ordre, personnel pénitentiaire, l'exécuteur et ses aides, pour un acte conjuguant aspects bureaucratiques et brutale violence. Sinon, le condamné est rendu aux circuits pénitentiaires ordinaires, où il risque cependant une autre forme de mort pénale. / Death penalty was about to disappear in France at the end of the 19th century. But the number of death sentences rose after 1906. The judiciary relied on the punitive emotions of the public opinion and on the criminological knowledge to eliminate some of the defendants. The capital punishment was very minor in the whole penal repression and its enforcement punished a small number of murders, considered as particularly heinous. The people sentenced to death came from the most miserable and less integrated parts of the society. Judicial discourses, such as speeches for the prosecution or the defense, or testimonies, confronted each other to determine if these people should benefit of mitigating circumstances. The functions of the death penalty were then discussed: deterrence, retribution, revenge or purge of the social body? Emotional as well as rational arguments were used. The cases were exposed at two different levels: a first time in front of the criminal court and of the citizen seating in the jury, a second time in front of the presidential advisors and of the President of the Republic, who had to decide of the pardon or the execution. The people sentenced to death had to wait their fate in particularly harsh conditions, which aimed at avoiding suicide or escape. Very strong rules framed their time and their space but some of them succeeded to adjust their environment for their own purposes. The preparation to death could be religious or secular. It the need arose, police, army, penitentiary staff, as well as the executioner and his helps were summoned to perform the execution, an act combining bureaucratic aspects and rough violence. In the other case the prisoner was held back to the ordinary prison system, where he could still risk another form of penal death.