All however is not well, even as deaths have decreased in the post-enlightenment West, so executions have increased in Asia-Pacific and Islamic countries.
Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington D.C., explains the reasons that executions are decreasing in the US, and sheds some light on the situation in other parts of the world.
After WWII, Western Europe begrudgingly accepted a humanist approach to the death penalty, and gradually, over the past 30 years, all European countries have abandoned legally killing their own citizens. Instead they prefer a more humanist approach, equating life long imprisonment without the opportunity of bail to be at least an adequate deterrent. Studies throughout Europe in fact showed that the death penalty does not act as an effective deterrent.
America followed Europe. It is now becoming increasingly difficult for those US states which have not banned executions to justify their actions, particularly when public opinion has swung round against executions over the past decade. Those still supporting executions are, according to Robert Dunham, mostly in the upper age group and politically on the right wing of their respective parties. There is a good chance that the death penalty will be abolished altogether in America over the next decade, however executions, like undocumented immigrants are favourite scapegoats used to leverage pubic opinion before elections. It seems unlikely that Europe will ever go back to the death penalty, as the EU has banned it, however a possible break up of the EU could instigate the resurrection of executions, particularly in East European countries.
