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Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of America Culture, 1776-1865
Contributor(s): Masur, Louis P. (Author)

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 ISBN: 0195066634     ISBN-13: 9780195066630
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
OUR PRICE: $47.24  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: May 1991
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Law | Criminal Law - General
- Social Science | Penology
- History | United States - 19th Century
Dewey: 364.660
LCCN: 88022719
Physical Information: 0.65" H x 5.36" W x 8.32" L (0.62 lbs) 224 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 19th Century
Features: Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
Review Citations: Ingram Advance 10/01/1999 pg. 269
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Western societies abandoned public executions in favor of private punishments, primarily confinement in penitentiaries and private executions. The transition, guided by a reconceptualization of the causes of crime, the nature of authority, and
the purposes of punishment, embodied the triumph of new sensibilities and the reconstitution of cultural values throughout the Western world. This study examines the conflict over capital punishment in the United States and the way it transformed American culture between the Revolution and the
Civil War. Relating the gradual shift in rituals of punishment and attitudes toward discipline to the emergence of a middle class culture that valued internal restraints and private punishments, Masur traces the changing configuration of American criminal justice. He examines the design of
execution day in the Revolutionary era as a spectacle of civil and religious order, the origins of organized opposition to the death penalty and the invention of the penitentiary, the creation of private executions, reform organizations' commitment to social activism, and the competing visions of
humanity and society lodged at the core of the debate over capital punishment. A fascinating and thoughtful look at a topic that remains of burning interest today, Rites of Execution will attract a wide range of scholarly and general readers.
 
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