Customer Reviews

Death Work: A Study of the Modern Execution Process (Wadsworth Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent book to use for research or to learn more about the death penalty. The author did an outstanding job of presenting the facts about death row and explaining why the death penalty should be abolished. He not only discusses how death row inmates are psychologically tortured, but how guards who must watch these men and women are also adversely affected by carrying out their jobs--the legal, premeditated murder of another human. Johnson explores the reasons for popular support for the death penalty, and believes that offenders should be punished, not killed for retribution. This is an amazing book which will affect anyone who takes the time to read it through, even those who staunchly support the death penalty.

Robert Johnson's Death Work is a contemporary classic. Focusing on the execution process itself it, perhaps better than any other book, illustrates one of the most neglected arguments against capital punishment: that, far from somehow being the simple taking of "a life for a life," it is MORE cruel, MORE degrading, than any murder committed in real life could ever be. As Albert Camus wrote: "For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life." Johnson's book is an extended illustration of the exact way this point is currently valid in the United States.

(I wonder, by the way, what reviewer Alan Kocevic does in Sweden, which is one of the least favourable countries in the whole world to capital punishment.)

this book is very informative on the subject of the death penalty. after my college course i kept the book i think just to hang on to. after 4 years i haven't opened it again but i still remember things that i learned from it.

Regardless of your views on the importance of incarceration to incapacitate offenders, this book is brilliantly researched and powerful. Mr. Kocevic apparently didn't like this book because of a general sense that criminals deserve what they get because they are all psychopaths (not an argument substantiated by any hard data about the composition of prisons and even death rows) - and that we should all want the death penalty to prevent recidivism (I'm not sure whether he is aware that almost every state has - and instructs jurors on - the existence of life without the possibility of parole).
However, this book will service to educate even people who support capital punishment - it is important that in a democracy, we are each aware of the acts that the State commits on our behalf, and the way in which the State commits them. This book makes clear that the institution of death row in this country is beneath the dignity of our society.

The author of this book is making an attempt to convince the reader that capital punishment is inhumane, gruesome and unjustified. Paradoxically, Johnson makes no mention of all innocent people who have been brutally murdered, raped, molested or tortured. Instead, he endeavors to make the reader feel sorry for psychopaths on death row. We are talking about individuals who have murdered, raped, molested and tortured innocent people. They have forfeited their legal right to live in our society. As is well-known, psychopaths are usually cunning, insidious, charming, manipulative, callous and can easily deceive their psychiatrists. It has been documented that malefactors frequently relapse into criminality upon release and commit additional crimes of gruesome nature. I wonder if abolitionists take into consideration the following aspects: What if they or their children were the next potential victim of a released convict? If people had known that they were the next potential victim of a "rehabilitated" murderer, I am not sure that they would oppose the death penalty. Abolitionists seem to think that as long as they do not get in a way of a murderer then they are against capital punishment. This way of reasoning is highly egotistical! However, this aspect has to be taken into consideration when forming an opinion on the subject matter. It is not possible to be objective about this issue. Dangerous criminals shoud either be incarcerated for life or sentenced to death. This is the only way to ensure maximum security for the public. We must not allow murderers, rapists and child molestors to commit additional crimes. In conclusion, this book presents vague arguments against the death penalty. It is ambiguous and has many shortcomings.