Book

Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition

By David Garland / Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, on 8 September 2020


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This book offers a fresh perspective on why the death penalty endures in the United States when so many other countries in the Western world have already abolished it. The book seeks to understand the persistence of the death penalty in the U.S. as a social fact, using sociological, historical and legal analyses to explain the unique and peculiar manner in which the death penalty is applied. Garland concludes that the death penalty has survived in the United States because it is deeply connected to the fundamentally American institutions of local autonomy and popular democracy.

  • Document type Book
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Networks,



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