NCJ Number
189603
Journal
Corrections Compendium Volume: 26 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2001 Pages: 16-17
Editor(s)
Susan L. Clayton
Date Published
July 2001
Length
2 pages
Annotation
This 2000 international update on capital punishment submitted to the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice classified world states according to their use and application of capital punishment.
Abstract
In its Resolution 1745, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations invited the Secretary General to submit periodic updates on the question of capital punishment at 5-year intervals. The first report was submitted in 1975. This was the sixth updated report, submitted in 2000 to the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice covering 1994 to 1998. Like past reports, the sixth report classified states according to their use and application of capital punishment. The report categories consisted of the abolitionist for all crimes in peacetime or wartime, abolitionist for ordinary crimes (i.e., murder, rape, and robbery with violence), de facto abolitionist where the death penalty was retained but had not been carried out for at least 10 years, and retentionist where death sentences had been imposed and had taken place during the past 10 years. The overall findings by year-end 2000 were: 76 nations were defined as complete abolitionist, 11 were defined as abolitionist for ordinary crimes, 36 were defined as retention but de facto abolitionist, and 71 were defined as retentionist. In summation, the retention or non-abolition of the death penalty was concentrated in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, and the U.S. government and 38 of its States, together with the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean, were the only jurisdictions in the Western Hemisphere that continue to retain the death penalty.