Civilizing Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England

1994 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall McGowen

On August 14, 1868, Thomas Wells was executed behind prison walls in Maidstone. According to the The Times, the event passed off so quietly that the public perhaps failed to note the significance of the occasion. With his death the drama of the public execution came to an end. “It is,” the newspaper explained, “emphatically one of those reforms which are hard to realize before they are made, but which, once made, seem so simple and unobjectionable that they are treated almost as a matter of course.” On the face of it, this passage seems to capture the salient features of the episode. In the decades leading up to abolition, opinion was deeply divided about the value of the death penalty and the wisdom of public executions. The Times itself, almost to the last moment, resisted the change. But once the issue was resolved in favor of privacy, no voice demanded their return. There were no demonstrations protesting the reform. Even the arguments once used to defend the publicity of punishment disappeared from view.But The Times meant something more by the phrase “one of those reforms.” It indicated a belief that the abolition belonged to a special category of measures, those that contributed to the progress of civilization in England. The idea that civilization demanded the end of the public execution figured prominently in reform arguments, and occupied just as important a place in later interpretations of the change. A liberal member of Parliament, John Hibbert, in pointing to an execution in 1866, explained that “no one anxious to promote civilization could wish to see the recurrence of a scene of that kind.”

Author(s):  
Emmanuel Taïeb

Executionary publicity was not universally contested. Many people were still attached to the show of political force embodied by public executions, as well as the opportunity to morally “test” oneself. Faced with the advocates of this form of “brutalization,” the chapter examines the arguments that backed the preservation of public rituals of execution. It includes discussions about the demand for exemplarity and attempts to delegitimize the regime in its attempts to reform the Criminal Code; the plan to restore the use of corporal punishment and the whip as a deterrent to crime; the people's thirst for the guillotine in the wake of the Soleilland affair paradoxically led to a major victory for the pro-death-penalty camp; compartmentalization of the civilizing process and insensitivity to suffering of the general populace; the executions, brutalization and glorification of the violence of war; the diffusion of military values in service of executions being conditioned by “trivialization”; a martial relationship to executions, executions that attracted spectators; lastly the transforming of an execution into a good death “by self-punishment” and a “good death” by convincing the public that punishment was administered by an autonomous individual to himself rather than by the law.


Author(s):  
Emmanuel Taïeb ◽  
Mitchel P. Roth

This book examines the question of state involvement in violence by tracing the evolution of public executions in France. Why did the state move executions from the bloody and public stage of the guillotine to behind prison doors? The book exposes the rituals and theatrical form of the death penalty and tells us who watched, who participated in, and who criticized (and ultimately brought an end to) a spectacle that the state called “punishment.” France's abolition of the death penalty in 1981 has long overshadowed its suppression of public executions over forty years earlier. Since the Revolution, executions attracted tens of thousands of curious onlookers. But, gradually, there was a shift in attitude and the public no longer saw this as a civilized pastime. Why? The book answers this question. It demonstrates the ways in which the media was at the vanguard of putting an end to the publicity surrounding the death penalty. The press had ample reason to be critical: cities were increasingly being used for leisure activity and prisons for those accused of criminal activity. The agitation surrounding each execution, coupled with a growing identification with the condemned, would blur these boundaries.


Author(s):  
Peggy Kamuf

This chapter begins with a survey of several of the explanations historians of capital punishment have put forward for the end of public executions in the West starting in the mid-nineteenth century. Besides well-known arguments of Foucault and others, I cite Victor Hugo’s observation from 1832 that moving the scaffold away from public view was an admission of shame in the practice. Against the background of secrecy laws proliferating around the U.S. death penalty today, I read Robert Coover’s 1977 novel The Public Burning, which restages the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 as an immense public spectacle in Times Square. The novel, I argue, crosses the two senses of its title; by dragging the execution into the public square it also brings out a shameless public sexual display, a public that is burning.


2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Deborah A. Thomas

VANITY FAIRIS A NOVEL OF ENIGMAS. In particular, after finishing the book, readers have often wondered why Thackeray refuses to tell us clearly whether or not Becky actually kills Joseph Sedley in chapter 67–a question recently given prominence by John Sutherland as one of the “Great Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Literature” (66–72). The explanation most commonly given for Thackeray's evasiveness on this point is that such unanswered questions inVanity Fairare part of the artistry of this unconventional work of fiction, a book that A. E. Dyson has described as “surely one of the world's most devious novels” (76). This view ofVanity Fairas a novel of narrative legerdemain–intended to keep the reader constantly alert and pondering what is being shown (or concealed)–is certainly true. However, an additional possible explanation for Thackeray's ambiguity on the subject of Jos's death also ought to be considered. This explanation lies in Thackeray's horrified reaction to the public execution of François Benjamin Courvoisier on 6 July 1840. The echoes between Thackeray's appalled description of the events of that morning and his subsequent famous novel suggest that he privately conceived of Becky as murdering Jos. The echoes also suggest that one reason why Thackeray handled this fictional murder obliquely is that, by the time of writingVanity Fair, he had come to believe that, although executions might occur, they should not take place in public. Exploring the subtle connections between Thackeray's profound revulsion at the death of Courvoisier and Thackeray's later treatment of Jos's death gives deeper meaning to the intentional ambiguities in chapter 67. These connections make the ambiguities surrounding the death of Jos part of a widespread debate over capital punishment in the 1840s and have significant ramifications in terms of the parallel between public executions and pornography and with regard to the role of Becky in this novel.


KOMUNIKE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Sahril Halim Dkk

Disruption era is a period that requires television broadcasters to do media innovation and creativity to keep up with the times and technology. The tight competition in the broadcasting industry requires that media companies are able to survive in the face of competitors. This paper aims to analyze the strategies used by TV9 Lombok, so that still exist in the media competition is intense. Innovation and creativity against the content of the news and entertainment media, as well as the application of divergence be a strategy used by TV9 Lombok to stay afloat. The methods used in this research is qualitative interpretive approach to address the strategies implemented by TV9 Lombok. Results of the study that the application of divergence by TV9 Lombok is to respond to changes in the way the audience in watching television broadcasts that were previously conventionally, but now the public can enjoy the content of television broadcasts online. The concept of this divergence is applied as the effort’s effectiveness in promoting the TV9 broadcasts by utilizing streaming youtube, social media to web news portals to closer to their audience. So do TV9 Lombok as efforts in maintaining its existence in the world of broadcasting


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-434
Author(s):  
Ibnu Chudzaifah

Pondok Pesantren is one of the Islamic educational institutions that aim to form human beings who have noble character, so that created a human who has a balance between physical and spiritual. Some educational institutions offer various models of learning to balance the current development so that its existence is still recognized by the community. While boarding school in dealing with the development of the times, has a commitment to make new innovations by presenting the pattern of education that can give birth to a reliable Human Resources. Especially pesantren currently has a challenging enough weight in facing the era of "Demographic Bonus". Demographic bonus is a phenomenon in which the structure of the population greatly benefits the community from the side of development in various sectors, because the productive age is more than the non productive age. This means that the dependency burden will decrease with the ratio of 64 percent of the productive age population to bear only 34 percent of the nonproductive age population. With all kinds of scholarships and skills given to students, students are expected to compete in all fields, especially in the face of Indonesia gold in 2020 to 2035.


2018 ◽  
pp. 64-68
Author(s):  
George V. Boos ◽  
Elena Yu. Matveeva

The problematic aspects related to the implementation of energy saving policy in the budget sphere are examined in the article. The factors hindering the mass and effective implementation of energysaving measures are highlighted in the article. Among these factors, there is the technical complexity of energysaving projects, the presence of innovative and investment risks, problems with the financial provision of costs in the face of increasing debt burden in most public budgets. The article concludes that in these circumstances only the energy service contract is a tool that allows implementing energy­saving measures without the first participation of budgetary funds in financing and allows transferring the risks of making technically inefficient decisions directly to the investor. In the article, the authors substantiate the importance of the institutional development of energy services directly in the public sector and analyze the measures of the comprehensive plan to improve the energy efficiency of the economy of the Russian Federation aimed at expanding the scope of energy service contracts in the public sector.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Nomensen Freddy Siahaan

After a long time was not heard to the public area, lately death penalty toward the criminal cases that classified as extraordinary crime are appear. The author discovers electronic article about the execution of the death penalty which is the prosecutor prepares to execute death penalty toward the drugs dealer. The president of Republic of Indonesia stated that it is necessary to give a deterrent effect to the convicted  criminal and keep the morality of Indonesian teenagers. According to my opinion, the author argues that it will be better and wiser if we discuss about renovating all of the Penitentiary in Indonesia than debating whether death penalty could be done in Indonesia or not, because it will be displeasure many parties, death penalty infringed the human rights of the convicted criminals and cause psychological burden to them, families, the executor of the death penalty, and other parties. Because if we have to improve the quality of the Penitentiary, if the function of Penitentiary for fostering moralily has been optimal or properly enough to the convicted criminals, Indonesia will be no longer need the death penalty option as sanction to the convicted crimanals including for the extraordinary crime (especially for drugs trafficking in our country). Penitentiary is one of the public services which aims for fostering the people that initially have bad habits (commited to the crime), so that they will have the awareness to change their bad attitude into the be better ones, will not harm others, and positively contributed to the society. Already Penitentiary’s conditions should be designed in such a way and as good as possible, so that the inmates feels like at their own home (like having a second home after his own home), and feel humaner to spend their days in the Penitentiary. The author believes that if the Penitentiary has been improved and optimized its function well, then the real purpose of Penitentiary will definitely achieved. As stated in Law Number 12 Year 1995 regarding to Penitentiary Article 2 which states "sanction system are organized in order to fostering the convicted criminals in order to be the real man, aware of their fault, improve themselves, and not to repeat the criminal act so that they can be friendly received by the community, can actively participated in the development of our country, and can socialize themselves as good citizen."Article 3 on this regulation also intensifies the function of Penitentiary "the function of Penitentiary is to prepare convicted criminals to be able to properly integrated to the society, so they can be accepted again as members of the public who are free and responsible ones." 


Author(s):  
Mary Cavanagh

The face to face interactions of reference librarians and reference assistants are studied from a theoretical practice perspective. Rather than reinforcing professional boundaries, the results of this analysis support reference practice in public libraries as a highly relational activity where reference “expertise” retains a significant subjectivist, relational dimension.Les interventions en personne des bibliothèques de référence et des adjoints à la référence sont étudiées du point de vue de la pratique théorique. Plutôt que de renforcer les frontières interprofessionnelles, les résultats de cette analyse appuient l'idée que les pratiques de référence en milieu public sont des activités hautement relationnelles où l'expertise de la référence conserve une dimension subjectiviste et relationnelle. 


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