Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash
DPIC’s High School Curriculum on the Death Penalty, which was originally created in cooperation with Michigan State University’s Communications Technology Laboratory in 2001, has been updated and integrated into DPIC’s main website. This resource covers death penalty history, legal procedures, arguments for and against capital punishment, and narratives of real capital cases.
The curriculum now includes interactive Tableau maps that allow students to explore state-level data on murder rates, executions, and methods of execution. There is also an interactive exercise on selecting a jury in a capital case. The accompanying Teacher’s Guide provides suggested lesson plans and activities to spark class discussion and critical thinking.
DPIC also continues to offer Capital Punishment in Context, a college-level curriculum centered on four case studies that illustrate a variety of issues in the application of the death penalty.