The Next Frontier
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Description
Today, two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death penalty, either officially or in practice, due mainly to the campaign to end state executions led by Western European nations. Will this success spread to Asia, where over 95 percent of executions now occur? Do Asian values and traditions support capital punishment, or will development and democratization end executions in the world's most rapidly developing region?David T. Johnson, an expert on law and society in Asia, and Franklin E. Zimring, a senior authority on capital punishment, combine detailed case studies of the death penalty in Asian nations with cross-national comparisons to identify the critical factors for the future of Asian death penalty policy. The clear trend is away from reliance on state execution and many nations with death penalties in their criminal codes rarely use it. Only the hard-line authoritarian regimes of China, Vietnam, Singapore, and North Korea execute with any frequency, and when authoritarian states experience democratic reforms, the rate of executions drops sharply, as in Taiwan and South Korea. Debunking the myth of "Asian values," Johnson and Zimring demonstrate that politics, rather than culture or tradition, is the major obstacle to the end of executions. Carefully researched and full of valuable lessons, The Next Frontier is the authoritative resource on the death penalty in Asia for scholars, policymakers, and advocates around the world.
Features
- The case studies and appendices provide the most authoritative resources available in the English language on the death penalty in Asia
- Though the pace of change will be slow, the authors ultimately conclude that executions will end in Asia as they have in Europe
- Zimring is a well-known authority on the death penalty often quoted in the media; Johnson is an award-winning scholar of law and society in Asia
Reviews
"Anyone who wants to understand the changing use of capital punishment and the prospects for its abolition in the most populous region of the world should read Johnson and Zimring's magisterial and timely analysis."--Roger Hood, Professor Emeritus of Criminology, University of Oxford, and co-author of The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective, Fourth Edition
"This is an important and valuable book. Professors Johnson and Zimring show the political essence of the death penalty in Asia and suggest political reform as the mechanism to end execution in the region. I pay tribute to their endeavor, and I sincerely hope that their work will serve as guidance to the abolition of the death penalty in Asia."--from the Foreword by Kim Dae-jung, 15th President of South Korea and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
"[This book] is an excellent treatise, well organised and systematic, in a clear and easily comprehensible style that avoids tedium through a lightness of touch and as much humour as the sobriety of the content might permit...an essential reference work...the clear and accessible style makes it useful to all those concerned with the death penalty, especially those in government, legal personnel and above all activists engaged in the struggle to banish the death penalty from society."--Bangkok Post
About the Author(s)
David T. Johnson
is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii and author of The Japanese Way of Justice: Prosecuting Crime in Japan
, which received book awards from the American Society of Criminology and the American Sociological Association.
Franklin E. Zimring
is the William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Distinguished Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment
(voted a Book of the Year by The Economist
).
