This chapter, by incarcerated writer John J. Lennon, explores the history of prison journalism through the careers of two writers, Wilbert Rideau and Dannie M. Martin. While both became journalists in prison, their writing careers took different forms. Rideau, serving a life sentence for murder in Louisiana, wrote in the typical, detached style of print journalists and helmed one of the most successful prison newspapers of all time, The Angolite, which was nominated for seven National Magazine Awards during his tenure as editor. Martin, serving a thirty-three-year sentence for bank robbery in federal prison, published voice-driven columns and freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle. Both exposed pressing, overlooked crises behind bars and both risked reprisals from fellow prisoners and the staff responsible for their safety. Their stories of “committing journalism” contain timely lessons for incarcerated writers and prison administrators as the current renaissance of prison journalism continues to grow.

In the Feyerabend lecture Kant already presents his claim that the principle of right is a principle of coercion, that is, that the state is authorized to use coercion to counteract an unauthorized violation of universal freedom. Such state use of force is a hinderance of a hinderance to freedom. But how is this coercive power specified in particular circumstances? I examine three extreme cases in which a state might be authorized to use its coercive power against its own citizens to cause their deaths: capital punishment, eminent right in emergencies, and war. This paper will show that Kant offered specific explanations of particular limits to legitimate state power, rejecting different limits offered by Beccaria (capital punishment), Achenwall (eminent right and war), and Vattel (war). These assessments reveal that Kant was of several minds regarding whether in any social contract a citizen could rationally consent to these uses of coercion and whether actual or only hypothetical consent was required. I suggest that only later in the published Doctrine of Right did Kant work out his position consistently.

Over 60 years have passed since the initiation of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. It is widely accepted among drug policy experts that the global war on illicit drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Various countries have moved away from a drug policy based on criminal punishment to a harm reduction approach - but others continue to pursue a punitive drug policy, including the use of the death penalty for drug-related activities. Despite the UN Human Rights Committee taking the position that the death penalty is only permissible for the ‘most serious crimes’, defined as intentional killing, 34 countries retain the death penalty for a range of drug offences. This chapter outlines the change in drug policy at the UN level as well as developments at the country level.

National narcotics agencies are a feature of law enforcement for drug crimes worldwide. They exist in most Southeast Asian nations that retain the death penalty for drug offences, including in Indonesia (Badan Narkotika Nasional); Singapore (Central Narcotics Board); Thailand (Narcotics Control Board); and Malaysia (Agensi Antidadah Kebangsaan). This chapter undertakes a comparative study of national narcotics agencies in Southeast Asia. Each of the aforementioned four agencies plays an outsize role in shaping both public opinion and government policy on the death penalty for drugs and on punitive responses to non-capital drug crimes more generally. Previous NGO reports and academic studies on Southeast Asian drug policy have failed to consider the institutional dimensions of drug control: this chapter aims to rectify this particular gap in the literature. Comparing relevant institutions across the region, this chapter accounts for organisational similarities and differences, explores the relationship between anti-drugs and other state institutions, and suggests modest policy recommendations.

Since 2007, reform-minded judges have sought to curb the over-zealous use of the death penalty in China. This includes strengthening central control over judicial decision-making and enhancing due process in both pre-trial and trial proceedings. In terms of drug-related crimes, Chinese courts have gradually raised the threshold quantity of drugs trafficked, narrowed the scope of criminals who would attract the death penalty, and imposed a heavier burden of proof on the prosecution. These measures have significantly reduced the execution rate for drug crimes. Although remaining relatively weak in China’s political structure, Chinese courts have played an essential role in restricting the use of the death penalty for drug-related crimes. As the Party-state needs to rely on the rule of law for political legitimacy, promote economic development, and improve social governance, Chinese courts have been allowed a degree of institutional autonomy and professionalism. They can be expected to further reform China’s death penalty system and restrict the use of the death penalty. The Chinese courts may be the best hope for an ‘execution-rare’ China in the longer-term future.

Although there is a substantial body of research addressing the economic motivations for drug crime, fewer studies have also considered the social influences that shape individuals’ involvement in the illicit drug economy. This chapter will draw on interviews conducted in prisons in Indonesia with people convicted of drug offences. Analysis suggests that many offenders do have economic motivations for entry into the drug trade. However, personal and relational motivations for drug use and drug trading must not be ignored, given that most of our participants were not in absolute poverty when they decided to offend. Moreover, in making decisions about participation in the drug trade, they were clearly influenced by trusted peer groups. The chapter presents this empirical data within the context of increasingly punitive penalties for drug offences in Southeast Asia, including the judicial execution of drug traffickers.

Globally, progress has been made in relation to the abolition of the death penalty. However, to maintain the “war on drugs”, East and Southeast Asia have adopted the most punitive responses to drug possession, use, trafficking, and production. The most extreme response has been the death penalty. Its presence in the East and Southeast Asia region continues to be regarded as an effective measure of deterrence, although several countries have invoked moratoriums or eliminated the mandatory component in its application. This chapter examines the context of the death penalty for drug trafficking in the region, particularly its role in shaping sentencing rationales in neighbouring abolitionist states. Hong Kong is an important case to consider as it is a locale within the region with a historical reputation as one of the major international transshipment sites, and while it does not have the death penalty like many of its neighbours, it metes out “harsh but consistent sentences.”

In November 2021, Thailand revised its legal framework on illegal drugs by promulgating a new Narcotics Code to replace twenty-four previous legislation. The new Code was enacted to consolidate and modernise Thailand’s approach to illegal drugs as well as to provide for an efficient licensing regime for drugs that are essential for the advancement of medical, scientific, and industrial innovations. The new Code seeks to impose appropriate punishments for drug offences and adopt alternatives to incarceration for drug users. However, the Code still retains the death penalty for some offences which contradicts the requirement in international law that the death penalty must not be imposed on drug offences. This chapter reviews the new Code and discusses the challenges which lie ahead.

The Singapore Government is well known for its stout defence of the use of capital punishment in the face of international criticism. It recently released studies to support claims of its effective deterrence against drug offending. However, domestic support for the death penalty, evidence for its effectiveness in controlling drug offences, and case law on capital drug offences are more nuanced than what appears at first sight. This chapter examines recent social, political, judicial, and regional developments, which may shape Singapore’s future death penalty policy and practice for drug offences.

The imposition and execution of the death penalty are not per se violations of general international law and thus may amount to lawful sanctions in certain circumstances. This is so, even though the global trend towards the ending of capital punishment continues. As of August 2024, 53 States retained the death penalty for ordinary criminal offences. This chapter discusses the legality of capital punishment and its different forms. Certain categories of person may never be executed.

This chapter considers Shelley’s diverse and complicated reflections on death in his prose and poetry. Shelley constantly interrogates and reads death as a matter of social, poetical, and political concern. It has no single systematic structure or meaning for him, and its conceptual irreducibility evokes the degree to which Shelley studied it with rigorous openness in order to maintain a theoretical scepticism regarding the many rhetorical uses and abuses of mortality.

Chapter 6 moves further into the postarrest setting, using as a springboard the findings and recommendations of the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Task Force for the state of Florida, which I chaired. At the time of our report, twenty-two people had been released from death row on the ground they had been wrongfully convicted. Relying on an analysis of caselaw, studies, news reports, and interviews, we described the flaws in Florida’s death penalty law and practice that contributed to these injustices. This chapter summarizes and updates the findings of the Task Force in several areas: the analysis of scientific evidence; the conduct of prosecutors; the qualifications, reimbursement, and competence of defense attorneys; the decision-making process of judges; the structure and decision-making process of capital sentencing juries; the clemency process; the system’s reaction to the race of the victim; and the treatment of people with mental disability. This chapter also documents that the failings it recounts – including incompetent forensic labs, prosecutors intent on winning at all costs, underpaid and overwhelmed defense attorneys, juries uncertain about their roles, and judges and governors driven by the next election – afflict many other state systems, in noncapital as well as capital cases. The recommendations of the Task Force, also reported here, would significantly improve the accuracy of criminal adjudications across the country.

This chapter analyses the political and social dynamics that unfolded in Norway following the country’s liberation on 8 May 1945 and how these shaped the contours of the treason trials in the long term. At the political level, it demonstrates, the early consensus between the returning exile government and the resistance forces in Norway on the topic of the trials was a key reason as to why they were largely implemented according to plan. At the social level, the swift commencement of the trials satisfied a strong public demand and was deemed a requirement for securing a peaceful transition period. The final section of the chapter details the public pressure felt by representatives of the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) in July 1945 as they debated and passed some of the basic instruments of the trials, most notably an act approving of the use of the death penalty.

Chapter 3 examines the common belief that those who are accused of crimes, particularly ethnic minorities, are probably guilty of something. The chapter begins by citing bias in news presentations of crime that reinforce the belief that people of color are criminally inclined. The process of criminalizing black and brown life begins early with disparities in discipline in schools resulting in the school-to-prison pipeline. Experiments on the shooting bias as well as actual police shootings is discussed next. The popularity of Stand Your Ground laws codifies white vigilantism. Biases that can enter all aspects of police investigation, criminal prosecution, sentencing, and the death penality are discussed. Experimental research exposing the role that harsh interrogations and false confessions in routing innocent suspects into the criminal legal system is presented as well. Juror behavior and their processing of evidence is also addressed in Chapter 3. The chapter concludes with suggested policy changes to prevent false confession and conviction, and toward more fairness in the criminal legal system.

This chapter explores how postcolonial reformers attempted to reconcile Brazil’s dependence on slavery and the slave trade within a nation-building project that emphasized it as an empire of law, order, and liberal citizenship. It discusses Brazil’s transition from a colony to a postcolonial nation, and analyzes the antislavery ideas that informed the building of the penitentiary in Rio as a crucible for modernizing the empire. By 1831, these postcolonial reformers converged around a philanthropic organization called the Sociedade Defensora da Liberdade e Independencia Nacional, whose objective was to modernize Brazil’s institution from colony to nation. The organization targeted abolition of the slave trade to Brazil and reform of its criminal justice system as two of its main objectives to anchor the empire on the path to progress, order, and economic prosperity. Analyzing the postcolonial debates on the abolition of the slave trade, legal reforms, and citizenship demonstrates that they were fundamental to the adoption of the penitentiary. Social reformers and antislavery advocates viewed the prohibition of the traffic as significant in resolving debates about race, nation, and citizenship in postindependence Brazil.