The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia (Studies in Crime and Public Policy) 1st Edition

`The Next Frontier' is a study of the death penalty in Asia. The title derives from the belief of the authors that `Asia is the next frontier in the two century debate about state execution as a criminal punishment.' The basis for the identification is that `Asia will be hugely important for the worldwide future of the death penalty' resulting from the twin fact that 60% of the world's population and 90% of the world's executions are therein located.

It is an excellent treatise, well organized and systematic, in a clear and easily comprehensible style that avoids tedium by a lightness of touch that borders on humour as much as the sobriety of the content might permit. The methodology employed is the quantization of aspects of the death penalty on a regional and temporal scale to the extent allowed by data which are sometimes deficient, if not deliberately falsified. The authors dare to treat the case of the People's Republic of China where data are strenuously concealed. They do this with a brave honesty but still succeed in making some sense of the dark secrets of China's practice by a wry substitution, where necessary, of adjectives such as `little', `much', or `more', presenting us with tentative options of interpretation which await further illumination when data become available.

From the beginning the authors nail to the doors of the regions courts their theses that the death penalty has `little or no importance for crime control', and that levels of execution depend on the nature of political regimes (`only authoritarian governments use execution with any frequency'), not on culture, public opinion, or crime rate, rejecting thereby the meaningless appeal to `Asian values'. And lest there might be any misunderstanding they quote with approval the words of Durkheim that deprivation of liberty and of liberty alone is the normal means of social control.

The book consists of three parts and seven appendices. The first part considers `Issues and Methods', providing an overall survey of the extent and practice of capital punishment in Asia. A second part consists of `National Profiles' of the practice of the death penalty in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. A final section draws lessons from the case studies, and comments on the pace of change and prospects for abolition in the region. Shorter summaries of the death penalty in North Korea, Hong Kong and Macao, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and India are consigned to appendices, as is a discussion of extrajudicial killing, which often surpasses the rate of judicial killing in Asia. While lacking the detail of the nation profiles, the appendices provide valuable and accurate summaries.

The authors are greatly optimistic for future progress to abolition in the Asian region. While truculent Singapore continues to beat the drum of an exclusive right to execute as many of its own citizens and such unfortunate foreigners as fall into its net, the vista to the East is bright. Numbers of executions are declining steadily, even in China. South Korea has breached the landmark of a ten year moratorium and shows a likelihood of being a regional leader in abolition. Taiwan may be next, and Japan too is moving. Taiwan and Malaysia have moved into the category of `Symbolic' executions. Vietnam and China have declared the intention of eventual abolition. Most difficult of all is to estimate the rate of progress. On the road to ending the ancient curse of capital punishment `The Next Frontier' will be a valuable `vade mecum'. One may confidently expect that future editions will update and track progress to restrict the frontier and to lead to its rapid disappearance.

Danthong Breen