Skip to main content

The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America

Citation: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997

The perennially controversial issue of capital punishment has generated especially passionate debate in recent years. In this book, two noted experts on crime provide a geo-historical perspective on capital punishment, showing vividly the incoherencies and contradictions in policies and practices across the country. Going back to the earliest U.S. executions, the authors challenge the belief that capital punishment serves as a deterrent. Using state-of-the-art methods drawn from geographic information systems (GIS), they illustrate the culture of capital punishment and its impact on selected groups, mapping the execution of women, for example, and the origin and diffusion of electrocution, the gas chamber, and lethal injection.

Related Content

Projects
Ushahidi — Tracking xenophobic attacks in South…

RWI Human Rights ThemeMaps.

ISFEREA — Enumeration of refugee camps (2003…

Publications
After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide. Craig Etchenson

Towards a Human Rights Observing System. Lars Bromley

Interpreting Optical Remote Sensing Images.

Programs
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net)

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Mapping Initiative

Data and Tools
Gridded Population of the World, v3. Center for International Earth Science Information Network…

European Commission Joint Research Center Fuzzy Matcher. European Commission Joint Research Center

Sudan Interagency Mapping data.