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China’s Death Penalty

History, Law and Contemporary Practices

By Hong Lu, Terance D. Miethe

Published March 6th 2009 by Routledge – 192 pages

Series: Routledge Advances in Criminology

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Description

By all accounts, China is the world leader in the number of legal executions. Its long historical use of capital punishment and its major political and economic changes over time are social facts that make China an ideal context for a case study of the death penalty in law and practice. This book examines the death penalty within the changing socio-political context of China. The authors'treatment of China' death penalty is legal, historical, and comparative. In particular, they examine;

  • the substantive and procedures laws surrounding capital punishment in different historical periods
  • the purposes and functions of capital punishment in China in various dynasties
  • changes in the method of imposition and relative prevalence of capital punishment over time
  • the socio-demographic profile of the executed and their crimes over the last two decades and comparative practices in other countries.

Their analyses of the death penalty in contemporary China focus on both its theory - how it should be done in law - and actual practice - based on available secondary reports/sources.

Contents

1. Introduction 2. Death Penalty as Law and Punishment 3. Historical and Legal Development of the Death Penalty 4. Contemporary Substantive and Procedural Criminal Law on the Death Penalty 5. The Application of the Death Penalty 6. The Process of Death Sentence and Execution 7. Reforms and the Future Prospects of the Death Penalty. Appendix: Judicial Judgment of Selected Capital Cases

Author Bio

Hong Lu is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has authored a book Punishment: A Comparative Historical Perspective (with Terance D. Miethe) and numerous articles in the areas of criminology and comparative legal studies appearing in journals including Law & Society Review and British Journal of Criminology.

Terance D. Miethe is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of 8 books and over 50 research articles in the areas of criminology and sociology. His most recent books include Rethinking Homicide: Exploring the Structure and Process Underlying Deadly Situations (with Wendy Regoeczi), Punishment: A Comparative Historical Perspective (with Hong Lu), and Fight Time: The Rules and Routines in Interpersonal Violence (with Gini Deibert).