Carolyn Strange – författare

Qualities of Mercy deals with the history of mercy, theremittance of punishments in the criminal law. The writers probe thediscretionary use of power and inquire how it has been exercised tospare convicted criminals from the full might of the law. Drawing onthe history of England, Canada, and Australia in periods when bothcapital and corporal punishment were still practised, they show thatcontrary to common assumptions the past was not a time of unmitigatedterror and they ask what inspired restraint in punishment. Theyconclude that the ability to decide who lived and died -- through theexercise or denial of mercy -- reinforced the power structure.

The essays are an important contribution to current public policydebates. If today's move towards unyielding and harsher punishmentproceeds, including campaigns to reinstate capital punishment, mercyalone will fail to neutralize the inequities of criminal justice. Onlyprofound cultural shifts and transitions of sensibility have the forceto stem the tide of unprecedented punitiveness.

This book examines the coercive and legally sanctioned strategies of exclusion and segregation undertaken over the last two centuries in a wide range of contexts. The political and cultural history of this period raises a number of questions about coercive exclusion. The essays in this collection examine why isolation has been such a persistent strategy in liberal and non-liberal nations, in colonial and post-colonial states and why practices of exclusion proliferated over the modern period, precisely when legal and political concepts of ''freedom'' were invented. In addition to offering new perspectives on the continuum of medico-penal sites of isolation from the asylum to the penitentiary, Isolation looks at less well-known sites, from leper villages to refugee camps to Native reserves.

This book examines the coercive and legally sanctioned strategies of exclusion and segregation undertaken over the last two centuries in a wide range of contexts. The political and cultural history of this period raises a number of questions about coercive exclusion. The essays in this collection examine why isolation has been such a persistent strategy in liberal and non-liberal nations, in colonial and post-colonial states and why practices of exclusion proliferated over the modern period, precisely when legal and political concepts of ''freedom'' were invented. In addition to offering new perspectives on the continuum of medico-penal sites of isolation from the asylum to the penitentiary, Isolation looks at less well-known sites, from leper villages to refugee camps to Native reserves.

From Confederation to the partial abolition of the death penalty a century later, defendants convicted of sexually motivated killings and sexually violent homicides in Canada were more likely than any other condemned criminals to be executed for their crimes. Despite the emergence of psychiatric expertise in criminal trials, moral disgust and anger proved more potent in courtrooms, the public mind, and the hearts of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for determining the outcome of capital cases.

Wherever death has been set as the ultimate criminal penalty, the poor, minority groups, and stigmatized peoples have been more likely to be accused, convicted, and executed. Although the vast majority of convicted sex killers were white, Canada’s racist notions of "the Indian mind" meant that Indigenous defendants faced the presumption of guilt. Black defendants were also subjected to discriminatory treatment, including near lynchings. In debates about capital punishment, abolitionists expressed concern that prejudices and poverty created the prospect of wrongful convictions.

Unique in the ways it reveals the emotional drivers of capital punishment in delivering inequitable outcomes, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History provides a thorough overview of sex murder and the death penalty in Canada. It serves as an essential history and a richly documented cautionary tale for the present.