NCJ Number
183642
Editor(s)
Glen H. Stassen
Date Published
1998
Length
238 pages
Annotation
In addition to presenting a pro-con debate on capital punishment, this series of papers discusses contrasting understandings of the crucial role of justice in ethics, using the capital punishment debate to identify what is wrong in American society and what should be done to ensure a more just and peaceful social order.
Abstract
Four papers debate whether justice involves retribution or restoration, with some authors arguing that the restoration of the offender should be the goal of justice and others claiming that justice requires a passionate and punitive reaction to heinous behavior as a means of maintaining a sense of the severity of harms done to others. Two papers present opposing views on the effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring those crimes for which it is applied. Four papers discuss the implications for justice of how capital punishment is administered, as they address justice as fairness and equal treatment before the law. Four papers illustrate how various passages from the Bible can be used to either support or reject capital punishment as a moral policy. Three papers consider the implications of capital punishment for a consistent ethic of the sacredness of human life, and two papers examine capital punishment as a reflection of a violent society. The concluding section contains two papers on the role of religion and the practices of faith communities in the debate on capital punishment. Chapter notes