Comparative Criminal Justice - Punishment

Punishment

People who study comparative criminal justice study different forms and use of punishment across societies, including capital punishment. Fifty-nine countries retain the death penalty as reported in 2007. Comparativists study the different ways in which execution is carried out across the world including hanging, shooting, beheading, injection, electrocution, and even stoning. Comparativists find that in many developing countries such as Iran, Indonesia, Belarus, and many others, that violent methods of execution such as hanging beheading, shooting, and stoning are much more common ways of carrying out the death penalty, and in many cases the only ways. However in western culture as well as developed countries such as the United States less brutal execution such as lethal injection is utilized. Even prison sentences can come harshly. In many countries such as Burma a person can be sentenced to prison for merely disagreeing with the government. Presumably ridiculous sentences such as multiple life sentences or sentences of hundreds, even thousands of years are meant to prohibit the chance of parole in the future. Although it may seem preposterous, western cultures carry out the same type of sentencing. Even though similar sentences are used across the globe leniency is varied widely between societies. Many governments such as the one metioned above in Burma provide swift and heavy punishment to assert their roles of power.