The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, recent­ly fea­tured an arti­cle enti­tled, ​“Death Penalty Lessons from Asia,” writ­ten by David T. Johnson and Franklin E. Zimring. The arti­cle is based in part on the authors’ book, The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia. Johnson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. Zimring is the William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. The arti­cle takes an in-depth look at the prac­tice of the death penal­ty in Asian juris­dic­tions over the last few decades. Drawing par­al­lels with the death penal­ty move­ment in Europe, Johnson and Zimring present eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, polit­i­cal change and pub­lic opin­ion as influ­en­tial to the prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Asian coun­tries. Their book is based on 5 major case stud­ies of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, and 7 short­er case stud­ies of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in North Korea, Hong Kong and Macao, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and India. 

In the arti­cle in Japan Focus, the authors concluded,

[T]here have been declines in exe­cu­tions as a tool of crime con­trol and in the polit­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion of state exe­cu­tion in the region. Economic devel­op­ment and polit­i­cal democ­ra­cy are both cor­re­lat­ed with declin­ing exe­cu­tions and with the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but nei­ther pros­per­i­ty nor democ­ra­cy is a suf­fi­cient con­di­tion for end­ing the death penal­ty. Concerns about the con­cen­tra­tion of state pow­er and its mis­use are as promi­nent a theme in anti-death penal­ty rhetoric in Asia as they are in the West, and the most impor­tant fea­ture of Asian nations that pre­dicts their lev­el of exe­cu­tion is not cul­ture or crime rate but rather the nature of the polit­i­cal regime. Only author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments exe­cute with any fre­quen­cy in Asia, and most of the hard line author­i­tar­i­an states in Asia where high rates of exe­cu­tion con­tin­ue to occur are com­mu­nist. Thus, while the polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances of Asia are dif­fer­ent from those found in oth­er parts of the world, the influ­ence of polit­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics on death penal­ty pol­i­cy are similar.

(D. Johnson & F. Zimring, ​“Death Penalty Lessons from Asia,” The Asia-Pacific Jour­nal, Vol. 39 – 1‑09, September 28, 2009; book, ​“The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia,” Oxford University Press, 2009).

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