Death Work Study of the Modern Execution Process 在线电子书 图书标签:
发表于2024-11-07
Death Work Study of the Modern Execution Process 在线电子书 pdf 下载 txt下载 epub 下载 mobi 下载 2024
Death Work is about executions. I ve studied this grim topic for about a decade<br > now. My first concern was with the character of life on death row, where con-<br > demned prisoners await the outcome of their legal appeals. In this book 1 build on<br > my earlier research, studying the executions that for more and more prisoners end<br > the long, lonely wait on death row. It is in the death chamber that the condemned<br > and their executioners make capital punishment a social reality. My aim is to place<br > that fatal connection in historical perspective, and to probe its psychological and<br > moral significance.<br > In a perverse sort of way, this is a timely topic. For roughly a decade, from the<br > late sixties to the late seventies, there was a moratorium on executions, backed by<br > the authority of the Supreme Court. This was the culmination of a gradual but<br > persistent decline in the use of the death penalty in the Western world during the<br > twentieth century. It appeared that executions would forever pass from the Amer-<br > ican scene. Nothing could have been further from the truth.<br > In 1977, the moratorium on carrying out the death sentence ended with the well<br > publicized execution of Gary Gilmore. Since then, more than a hundred people have<br > been put to death, most of them in the past few years. Some twenty-three hundred<br > prisoners are presently confined on death rows across the nation. Most have lived<br > under sentence of death for years, in some cases a decade or more. Many of them<br > are coming to the end of the legal appeals process. It is fair to say that executions<br > will be with us for the foreseeable future.<br > For better or worse, the modern death penalty is a man s affair. Of the prisoners<br > executed recently, only one, less than 1 percent, was a woman; fewer than 1 percent<br > of the prisoners waiting to die are women. More women were executed in the past,<br > especially during the infamous witch hunts, but so far as 1 can determine, in every<br > historical period women have been executed for crimes at substantially lower rates<br > than men. I am aware of no instance, at any time in history, of a woman serving as<br > an executioner. Certainly none of today s executioners are women. To be sure,<br > women staff members may take on supporting roles, particularly when the con-<br > demned prisoner is a women, but their involvement stops at that point. According-<br > ly, my narration maintains a generic male perspective except where it is obviously<br > inappropriate to do so.<br > The execution process today is distinctively mechanical, impersonal, and<br > ultimately dehumanizing. This procedure may be routine, but it can never be<br > k~<br >
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Death Work Study of the Modern Execution Process 在线电子书 pdf 下载 txt下载 epub 下载 mobi 下载 2024