Confronting Capital Punishment in Asia

Roger Hood is a Research Associate, formerly Professor of Criminology and Fellow of All Souls College, and former Director of the Centre for Criminological Research, All Souls College. He received the Cesare Beccaria Medal in 2011 from the International Society for Social Defence and a Humane Criminal Policy for his contributions towards the abolition of the death penalty and in 2012 the European Society of Criminology Award for a lifetime contribution as a European criminologist. His research has had four main strands: the death penalty; race and sentencing; the parole system; and the history of the emergence of penal policy. Dr Surya Deva is an Associate Professor at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong. Dr Deva's primary research interests lie in Corporate Social Responsibility, Indo-Chinese Constitutional Law, International Human Rights, Globalisation, and Sustainable Development. He has published numerous book chapters and journal articles in these areas.

To what extent does popular support for discontinuation of the death penalty have to be presented for abolitionist laws to be legitimate? Do changes in public attitudes toward the death penalty necessarily precede abolition, or do cultural shifts occur later as a by-product of bold legal or political reforms? In raising these and other questions, this volume not only adds to our understanding of capital punishment in an area of obvious interest, but opens new and promising directions for further inquiry.

• SITUATING ASIA IN AN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CONTEXT ; 1. State Execution: Is Asia Different and Why? ; 2. The Impact and Importance of International Human Rights Standards: Asia in World Perspective ; 3. Examining China's Response to the Global Campaign against the Death Penalty ; 4. The Role of National Human Rights Institutions in Abolishing Capital Punishment: A Critical Evaluation ; 5. The Role of Abolitionist Nations in stopping the use of the Death Penalty in Asia: The Case of Australia ; THE PROGRESS SO FAR ; 6. Recent Reforms and Prospects in China ; 7. Abolition of the Death Penalty in India: Constitutional and Human Rights Dimensions ; 8. Singapore's Death Penalty: The Beginning of the End? ; 9. Progress and Problems in Japanese Capital Punishment ; PUBLIC OPINION AND DEATH PENALTY REFORM ; 10. Capital Punishment Reform, Public Opinion, and Penal Elitism in the People's Republic of China ; 11. Challenging the Japanese Government's Approach to the Death Penalty ; THE POLITICS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN PRACTICE ; 12. Suspending Death in Chinese Capital Cases: The Road to Reform ; 13. Death Penalty in the 'Rarest of Rare' Cases: A Critique of Judicial Choice-Making ; 14. Don't be Cruel: The 'Death Row Phenomenon' and India's 'Delay' Jurisprudence