Is the Death Penalty Debate Really Dead? Contrasting Capital Punishment Support in Canada and the United States

Abstract

For decades, capital punishment has been a highly divisive topic. Today, most democratic governments have done away with capital punishment, with few exceptions which include the United States. Drawing from the Canadian Election Study (2015) and the American National Election Study (2016), this article explores the underlying value systems that shape contemporary pro-death penalty opinions in Canada and in the United States. Findings suggest that, in both countries, pro-death penalty attitudes should be better understood as part of a "law and order syndrome." In the United States, the distribution of attitudes toward death penalty is also the reflection of a partisan divide. Our results also support the hypothesis that government distrust increases death penalty support in Canada.

The predictive model of citizens' attitudes about the risks of introducing death penalty in the Serbian criminal justice system

“…Beginning with the period 4000 years ago, when early Babylonian civilizations used formal killing (execution) for acts that violated laws or norms established by the sovereign population, marking them as crimes, as well as periods of criminal expulsion of individuals from the community in ancient Greece, which would due to the lack of shelter, exposure to wildlife and animals, often end in death, death penalty, in various forms, followed all societies that had jurisdiction over a particular territory (Colucci, 2020). The trend of mass abolition of death penalty followed in the second half of the 20 th century (Mathias, 2013), so that in recent decades more than 140 countries around the world have abolished death penalty (Bones & Sabriseilabi, 2018;Rancourt et al, 2020). The virtual revolution in the way of practising and experiencing death penalty on a global level was contributed by global cultural factors/drivers, such as the global sacralization of the individual, measured as the institutionalization of human rights regimes, as well as the dominant religion in countries (Mathias, 2013).…”

The Predictive Model of Citizens’ Attitudes About the Risks of Introducing the Death Penalty in the Legal System: A Case Study of Serbia

“…The trend of mass abolition of the death penalty followed in the second half of the 20th century (Mathias, 2013), that, in recent decades, more than 140 countries around the world have abolished the death penalty (Bones & Sabriseilabi, 2018;Rancourt, Ouellet, & Dufresne, 2020). The virtual revolution in the way of practicing and experiencing the death penalty, on a global level, was contributed by global cultural factors-drivers such as the global sacralization of the individual, measured as the institutionalization of human rights regimes, as well as the dominant religion in countries (Mathias, 2013).…”