Qualities of mercy : justice, punishment, and discretion
Qualities of Mercy deals with the history of mercy in criminal justice. The writers probe the discretionary use of power and examine how it has been exercised to spare convicted criminals from the full might of the law. Looking at England, Canada, and Australia in periods when both capital and corporal punishment were still practised, the authors show that, contrary to common assumptions, the past was not a time of unmitigated terror, and they try to determine what inspired restraint in punishment. Over the past two hundred years, the ability to decide who lived and died - through the exercise or denial of mercy - has tended to reinforce social, economic, and political power structures
History
xii, 186 pages ; 24 cm
9780774805841, 9780774805858, 0774805846, 0774805854
37631304
Civilized people don't want to see that sort of thing: the decline of physical punishment in London, 1760-1840 / Greg T. Smith
In place of death: transportation, penal practices, and the English state, 1770-1830 / Simon Devereaux
'Harshness and forbearance': the politics of pardons and the Upper Canada rebellion / Barry Wright
Savage mercy: native culture and the modification of capital punishment in nineteenth-century British Columbia / Tina Loo
Discretionary justice: political culture and the death penalty in New South Wales and Ontario, 1890-1920 / Carolyn Strange
Punishment in late-twentieth-century Canada: an afterword / Anthony N. Doob