The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective (Paperback) by Roger Hood, Carolyn Hoyle

'Review from previous edition The skill with which this material is brought together and evaluated from all over the world makes this book a documentary masterpiece...it is also an important contribution to the general theory of deterrence.'Professor Heike Jung, Zeitschrift f���������r Strafvollzug und Straff���������lligenhilfe'Its rigorous scholarship and the breadth of its coverage are hugely impressive features; its claim to "worldwide" coverage is no idle boast. This can fairly lay claim to being the closest thing to a definitive source-book on this important subject.'Paul Craig, Public Law'This current edition of the series is an indispensable resource for serious students of the death penalty anywhere. It is also well written and happily devoid of academic pretension. We are long past the era when anyone could argue that trends in other nations are of no importance to domestic death penalty policy, and this is as true in the United States as in the PRC and Rwanda...What Hood and Hoyle provide their readers is a careful sifting of datatogether with a level of analysis beyond the capacity of resources like Amnesty International.'Punishment & Society 11 (2), 2009'The prose is polished and eminently readable. The scholarship is what one expects from two top Oxford academics. The book is much more than an update of the third edition. It contains new chapters and develops subjects that were not treated in any detail by Professor Hood in the past. Its message is inspiring and its arguments are devastating. The fourth edition of The Death Penalty, A Worldwide Perspective book belongs in the library of all the readers ofthis journal.'William A. Schabas, Human Rights Quarterly 2009'It is important to acknowledge that the book is not simply a scholarly masterpiece in the purely academic sense...this work constitutes a major contribution to the real world of punishing the most serious offenders...It is both masterly and magisterial and, especially for those who have a genuine interest in the subject, indispensible.'Prof Barry Mitchell, Justice of the Peace Vol 172'This fourth edition in 2008, takes the work to greater heights of being the last word on a worldwide perspective on the death penalty. No book on the subject gives such up-to-date authentic information on this grim subject.'The Commonwealth Lawyer.'...provide(s) a wealth of information, analysis and strategic advice on abolition from an international and comparative perspective...It constitutes an exhaustive and devastating critique of the way in which capital punishment functions currently'Roger S Clark, Criminal Law Forum