Qualities of Mercy: Justice, Punishment, and Discretion

Front Cover
Carolyn Strange
UBC Press, 1996 - History - 186 pages
Qualities of Mercy deals with the history of mercy, the remittance of punishments in the criminal law. The writers probe the discretionary use of power and inquire how it has been exercised to spare convicted criminals from the full might of the law. Drawing on the history of England, Canada, and Australia in periods when both capital and corporal punishment were still practised, they show that contrary to common assumptions the past was not a time of unmitigated terror and they ask what inspired restraint in punishment. They conclude that the ability to decide who lived and died -- through the exercise or denial of mercy -- reinforced the power structure.

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Contents

The Decline
21
Transportation Penal Practices and the English State
52
The Politics of Pardons and the Upper
77
Native Culture and the Modification of Capital Punish
104
Political Culture and the Death Penalty in
130
An Afterword
166
Contributors
179
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About the author (1996)

Carolyn Strange teaches at the Centre of Criminologyat the University of Toronto. She is the author of Toronto'sGirl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880-1930.

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