NCJ Number
115675
Date Published
1990
Length
174 pages
Annotation
The execution process today is distinctively mechanical, impersonal, and ultimately dehumanizing.
Abstract
Sensibilities about violence have evolved considerably over the ages, however, the death penalty is alive and well in contemporary America. Public executions have given way to executions which take place inside penal institutions. Today's executions are highly bureaucratic jobs with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities, and procedures. Correctional officials are always involved in executions, even if they themselves do not directly carry out the killing. The deathwatch team goes to work during the last hours before a scheduled execution, their responsibilities being service, surveillance, and control. The official witnesses, numbering between six and twelve, are meant to be disinterested citizens in good standing drawn from a cross section of the State's population and called upon to represent the community, testifying to the propriety of the execution. Condemned prisoners spend years on death row, living in a segregated area of the prison and spending long hours of "dead time" in either single or congregate cells. This regime incorporates many of the standard elements of torturous confinement. Since prisoners cannot be executed without being tortured, the whole death penalty process is viewed as unjust. Notes, index.