Death by justice. A socio-juridical analysis of the death penalty

This work deals with the ever-present debate on the death penalty, still considered by some as just punishment for heinous crimes. Culturally and socially varied countries recognize and implement the death penalty in different ways, in the name of a need for retribution, general prevention and deterrence. The book opens with an analysis of the social necessity of punishment, going through the classics to deepen the debate on the functions of punishment and dwelling on the specific of the death penalty and the renewed desire for the death penalty. We face the death penalty in a social-legal perspective, in which the analysis of its application in the international scene and the different means of execution are part of the desire to read and think about the death penalty through the tools that produce it. Asking ourselves today in the third millennium, in a global and civilized society, about the death penalty, is asking ourselves what our fears and needs are. It’s the people who want the death penalty, because power no longer has a need for it. The desire for extreme punishment should be seen right behind an archaic and social need for punishment of the guilty, which recalls ancient torture and which asks us to show solidarity towards the ones who set themselves against the values that we have set for ourselves as founders. And in this we need to recreate, at least around the penalty, a sense of social solidarity, a sense of belonging that binds our conscience and that acquires a social significance to the request to die of justice.