United Kingdom

Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford

The Death Penalty Research Unit has three main aims:

  • to develop empirical, theoretical and policy-relevant research on the death penalty worldwide;
  • to encourage death penalty scholarship including at graduate level, through education, events, research dissemination and an active blog; and
  • to engage in knowledge production, exchange and dissemination in cooperation with civil society, charities, legal practitioners, policy-makers and local academics in those countries where research is ongoing.

Part of the Oxford Centre’s Global Criminal Justice Hub, the DPRU focuses on the retention, administration and politics of the death penalty worldwide. We aim to understand the rationales for the death penalty, how it is used in practice, and its diverse application and impact on communities.

We are committed to working with our partners in various regions on collaborative production and dissemination of empirical and theoretical knowledge. This work is not only aimed at elucidating the law and practice of capital punishment worldwide, but at challenging it, with the explicit aim of abolition or, failing that, progressive restriction.

The DPRU is led by Professor Carolyn Hoyle. It builds on the strong foundations laid by the late Professor Roger Hood, Director of the Centre for Criminology from 1973 to 2003. Much of our work is done in partnership with The Death Penalty Project, a London-based legal action charity with many years of experience of litigation, capacity building and research.

The DPRU also collaborates with partner organisations and academics in the countries we work in; building on their research aspirations, training ‘local’ researchers in a range of research methodologies, and sharing in the production and dissemination of outputs. In so doing, we seek to ensure that our research has an impact on governments, civil society, legal practitioners and those who are subject to criminal justice systems, while also assisting in the development of scholarship in these regions.

Date founded

2020             

Structure type

Association             

Contact informations

Centre for Criminology, St Cross Building, St Cross Road
OX1 3UL Oxford
Phone +44 7882365226

Resources

Document(s)

The politics of capital punishment for foreign nationals in Iran

By Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford, on 5 February 2024


2024

Academic Article

Iran (Islamic Republic of)


More details See the document

Published in December 2023.

This paper seeks to map the political economy of capital punishment in Iran, in particular in relation to dual and foreign nationals, and examines its external and internal functions. The external functions include suppressing the ‘cultural threat’ of cross-border drug trafficking, achieving more power in sanctions negotiations, seeking reciprocal prisoner swaps or demanding recompense for outstanding multinational debt. The internal functions include quashing protests against the regime, supressing separatist movements, or even just ‘otherness’. It is evident that those facing disadvantage across foreign national and intersectional lines face the death penalty disproportionately. In addition, although only representing a fraction of the overall population of death row, the arbitrary detention of dual nationals has a disproportionate political function.

  • Document type Academic Article
  • Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)

Document(s)

Blaming it on the past: Usages of the Middle Ages in contemporary discourses of the death penalty in England

By Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford, on 5 February 2024


Academic Article

United Kingdom


More details See the document

Published in December 2023.

In popular, intellectual and political culture, the Middle Ages are intrinsically tied to violent images of public executions. To historians of the medieval period, this temporal attachment of the death penalty to a remote period is puzzling, especially since it is still widely enforced in the world today and was only relatively recently abolished in Europe. Capital punishment is not only a part of history, but a modern-day reality. Why, therefore, do we pin this punishment to the Middle Ages? This paper aims to analyse the discourses surrounding the usage of the Middle Ages in modern discussions on the death penalty, and to clarify medieval practices of capital punishment, showing how remote they are from our contemporary understanding

  • Document type Academic Article
  • Countries list United Kingdom

Document(s)

Efforts towards abolition of the death penalty: Challenges and prospects

By Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford, on 5 February 2024


Academic Article

Trend Towards Abolition


More details See the document

Published in December 2023.

This paper reflects on the role of international human rights treaties in promoting universal abolition and progressive restriction of the death penalty. It suggests that over the past quarter of a century a ‘new human rights dynamic’ has aimed to generate universal acceptance that however it is administered, the death penalty violates the human rights of all citizens exposed to it. Nevertheless, defences of capital punishment based on principles of national sovereignty are engrained in some parts of the world, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. The human rights project struggles to make inroads into such jurisdictions where political will is opposed to abolition, and trenchant protection of sovereignty threatens the very universality of these rights.

  • Document type Academic Article
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition