Senate Bill 1018

Several weeks ago a group of people began to talk about the possibilities of a bill to establish a Commission along the lines of the New Jersey Commission in Oregon. Much encouraged by the mixture of commissioners in NJ who had nevertheless concluded that the death penalty there served no legitimate purpose and should be abolished, this group of scholars, attorneys, legislators, activists and others wondered if the time was ripe for such an enquiry here.

What had made them think so? Opinion polls have not indicated much shift in Oregon support although data about prosecutor charging behaviours and jury sentencing behaviours have indicated a trend that sees fewer people charged with aggravated murder and fewer sentenced to death even if they do go to trial. Indeed last year, a Multnomah jury determined that someone convicted of a double murder would go to prison for life rather than be executed, a first for a Multnomah jury.

But national trends also reflect this loss of enthusiasm for sentencing. And this is the behaviour to watch. The ebb and flow of executions in states are a playing out of past problems with death penalty statutes and refinements of state death penalty machines. It is current charging and sentencing behaviour which reflect public confidence in this controversial policy.

Despite a continuing swing toward retributive responses to crime, and increasing incarceration and harsher punishments, a rise in the concomitant concern with wrongful conviction and the exonerations of over 123 people who were sentenced to death is giving even the most committed supporters pause.

But apparently not sufficiently to ensure a bill requesting an enquiry even a hearing. I would love to know why the hearing was so vigorously opposed, and by whom.

Interesting.

In chronological order, here are the classes I will be offering through Portland State University this summer session. They are all online and participants can audit if you don’t need credit. Registration questions and processes at www.pdx.edu. Please join me!

AJ410/510: The Function of Crime in Society: Reflections on Durkheim
(1 credit - web)
Monday 25th-Friday 29th June, 2007

Bellah, R.N. (Ed.) (1973) Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society. Chicago, ILL: University of Chicago Press.

Emile Durkheim is credited with being the father of sociology as an academic discipline. Durkheim saw the occurrence of different groups in society as evidence of their function in balancing society. Different roles have the effect of binding people together in Durkheim’s view although the cohesiveness of these bonds may be of differing types. He distinguished two: mechanical and organic. Mechanical bonds were fostered by law and contracts and tended toward more punitive and respressive social relations. Organic bonds, in contrast were founded on more restitutive aims. In this course participants will read and reflect on the implications of Durkheim’s ideas for the study of criminology.

AJ410/510: Crime and Social Order: Reflections on Garland
(1 credit – web)
Monday 2nd – Friday 6th July, 2007

Garland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, ILL: University of Chicago Press.

Garland writes compellingly and influentially about what he calls “cultures of control”. In this book he grapples with serious questions such as, if we in the US and the UK are so convinced of the value of individual freedom then why have we adopted mass imprisonment and other repressive social controls over the last decades? Garland has developed an analysis of the underpinnings of what he calls the control culture which makes essential reading for students of criminal justice today, and which has informed much interesting work both nationally and internationally. In this course participants will read and reflect on the implications of Garland’s ideas for their own theories of criminal justice.

AJ410/510 The Proper Sphere of Punishment: Reflections on Foucault
(1 credit – web)
Monday 9th- Friday 13th July, 2007

Foucault, M. (1995) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Michel Foucault is one of the most influential contemporary sociological philosophers. Fundamental to all Foucault’s work is the way power and knowledge are related in society. Discipline and Punish examines the evolution of this relationship while Foucault argues that the focus of punishment moves from the body to the soul. His project is to explain the appearance of contemporary imprisonment. In this course, participants will read his book together, building meaning and understanding through discussion of Foucault’s ideas and considering trends and developments in American penal policy in the light of his propositions.

AJ410/510 Concepts and Purposes of Pain and Harm in Corrections
(1 credit – web)
Monday 16th-20th July

Clear, T.R. (1994) Harm in American Penology: Offenders, Victims and Their Communities. New York, NY: State University of New York Press.

Ignatieff, M. (1978) A Just Measure of Pain; The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850. London, UK: Penguin Books

Clear’s project is to examine the expansion of imprisonment (which continues unabated more then a decade after he wrote this book) and to challenge it in terms of the harm it does not just to offenders but also to their communities. Ignatieff’s book analyses a period in history when the very function of punishment changed and the modern concept of penitentiary was born. When we read these two books together, what light does each shed on the thoughts and conclusions of the other? When we consider their propositions, what do they contribute to our understanding of current trends in American penology? Participants will read and discuss these ideas, as well as ideas which surface in the reading during this one week intensive book study.

AJ410/510 “The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment”: International Perspectives on the Death Penalty.
(4 credit – web)
25th July – 17th August, 2007

Sarat, A., & Boulanger, C. (Ed.s) (2005) Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Hood, R. (2002) The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective (3rd Edition) Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

While the majority of states in the US impose the death penalty on their worst criminals, a slight but increasing majority of other nations have abolished capital punishment. International law prohibits international courts and tribunals from using the death penalty and international treaties and conventions suggest an objective of total abolition. The US is under considerable international pressure to reconsider its increasingly isolated stance. When major religious writings call for the death penalty, and most cultures have espoused it until recently, what explains this trend to abolition? Is abolition of the death penalty becoming an international norm? How would we know if this were the case, and what obligation would the US then be under to abolish? American “Exceptionalism” and concepts of sovereignty will be discussed in order to understand these trends in all their complexity.

AJ410/510 Conceptual Underpinnings of International Law in Crimes Against Humanity: Reflections on May
(1 credit – web)
August 6th-10th, 2007

May, L. (2005) Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

We are all horrified by crimes against humanity when we learn about them from our news outlets. We turn to one another and wonder why no-one is doing anything about it. And why aren’t they? Larry May probes the underpinnings of international law, concepts of sovereignty, and the evolution of norms to provide a logical and legal argument to justify intervention in certain circumstances. His argument throws light on domestic enforcement and concepts of jurisdiction that will be considered. Participants in this short course will work collaboratively to examine the situation in Darfur where crimes against humanity are being committed, and use May’s discussion to provide a critique of what international intervention there has been, making recommendations for ways of approaching this situation and similar situations in the future with greater certainty and effectiveness.

My name is Rachel Cunliffe Hardesty. I live in Oregon, USA and have been involved in a project to discover the meaning of the death penalty to Oregonians for the past 8 years.

My primary methodology is a variation of a listening project, where I meet in a variety of venues with people to whom the death penalty matters.

This is my blog. Here I will tell you some of the stories I have heard in my travels around the state, ponder some of the ideas that have come to me as a result, and relate my work on the ground to the wider national and international context experienced through media, study, and connections with people involved in that bigger milieu.

My aim is to use this writing space to further my thinking, and to broaden the dialogue about the death penalty through knowledge of the impact it has on one particular community in America.