NCJ Number
227679
Journal
Punishment and Society Volume: 11 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2009 Pages: 337-358
Date Published
July 2009
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This article uses a 1958 crime and 1959 execution of a teenage serial killer, a time of dominant 'penal welfarism' and the decline of capital punishment, to examine and question the core assumptions upon which the 1950s penology of 'penal welfarism' was based.
Abstract
The use and popularity of the death penalty declined as penal welfarism pervaded political and academic approaches to crime control. However, an analysis to crimes in 1958 and execution in 1959 of teenage serial killer Charles Starkweather revealed that the integrity of penal welfarism was significantly shaken by conflict between the political and intellectual commitments required for its maintenance. In 1958, Starkweather had gone on a crime spree killing 11 people, and 2 years later died in Nebraska's electric chair. Starkweather's crime and execution occurred at a crucial and understudied moment in the history of the American death penalty. In the late 1950s, the belief that society was partly to blame for its wayward citizens and that social scientists could develop ways to rehabilitate offenders seemed to be gaining strength with each passing year; a philosophy of 'penal welfarism' was becoming dominant. Starkweather's crime and the responses it elicited called into question the core assumptions upon which the 1950s penology was based. This case ultimately reveals one impetus for the return of retributive responses to crime in political and academic circles and the reemergence of the death penalty in the last three decades of the 20th century. Notes and references