By: Liam Evans
Whether you heard of it first in your favorite legal drama or a class discussion, the death penalty is often referenced in the context of crime and punishment and the ethics surrounding it. Despite capital punishment already being abolished in 24 states and under a moratorium in three states, many Americans would be surprised to learn that the United States is in the global minority of states that still actively use the death penalty. It is also surprising that many notable high-income democracies continue to use the death penalty and that, in recent years, capital punishment has increased in many countries. Despite its negative implications, the death penalty persists around the world, both in democratic countries such as the United States, Japan, and Taiwan, and authoritarian countries such as China and Iran. Shockingly, capital punishment is retained by high-income democracies but resurging in authoritarian states. While the global movement to abolish capital punishment has had some successes, it has also seen recent backsliding as democratic and authoritarian states alike are struggling to end capital punishment, often due to historical, cultural, and sociological factors, rather than economic ones.
It was only at the end of World War II and its atrocities that the idea of abolishing the death penalty gained global traction. Since then, 142 countries have abolished capital punishment in law or in practice. Nevertheless, many notable states retain it, the most striking examples being the United States and Japan. Both countries share two characteristics that favor the usage of capital punishment: a long-held and widespread view descended from the disproven idea that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime and a populace that still possesses notably strong support for the death penalty. In this manner, traditional notions of crime, punishment, and justice often underpin a desire to maintain capital punishment even when such notions have been heavily criticized or even disproven. This persistence of capital punishment is also largely seen in authoritarian states. However, it is also worth noting that low-income and undemocratic states have also abolished the death penalty, most recently Zimbabwe in 2024. As such, public perception towards crime and punishment and historical trends, among other factors, are often more predictive of that country’s decision to continue using capital punishment than the country’s economic or democratic development.
Due to varying levels of willingness to challenge deeply-held beliefs surrounding crime and punishment within each country’s populace, the success of capital punishment abolition will also vary wildly.. Another crucial factor to consider is the historical and political context. Typically, countries that abolished the death penalty early-on in the abolition movement were either formerly belligerent European states during WWII or former colonies. For these reasons, seeing such a form of punishment as a relic of their inhumane pasts, many such states have unsurprisingly abolished capital punishment both in law and in practice. Lastly, it is important to consider the role of international organizations in rewarding countries for abolishing capital punishment. For instance, during the 1990s the EU mandated that prospective member states would have to abolish their practice of the death penalty to be considered for membership.
Despite the myriad reasons to abolish capital punishment that states are presented with, recent years have seen increases in executions as punishment, particularly in already authoritarian states, primarily as a tool against political dissent. For instance, in countries such as Belarus, China, and Saudi Arabia, executions are carried out on the basis of perceived political dissent as such behavior is seen as a great threat to national security. Another common justification for increasing executions has been anti-drug campaigns and other missions of justice to preserve traditional notions of law and order. For instance, an increase in death penalty executions has been seen in both Malaysia and Indonesia due to drug-related offenses, which are socially stigmatized. These tactics, combined with a shared history of colonization and violence brought by WWII, have facilitated an increase in the usage of capital punishment in recent years.
Taking all of these different factors together, the current state of global capital punishment faces an increasing amount of rightful opposition in the form of a concerted, large-scale abolitionist movement brought by international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, a movement that has seen many recent successes. Nevertheless, capital punishment remains prevalent, regardless of regime type. As such, as a result of various historical, cultural, and sociological factors surrounding crime and punishment, the death penalty is far from obsolete globally.
