Explaining Support for Death Penalty in the Africa Context

• In Event: Human Rights Issues across the World

Abstract

There is a global trend towards abolition of the death penalty in the last decades with countries in Africa making significant progress towards abolition. Despite the progress made about a third of African countries still retain the death penalty for various crimes and in a few cases the death penalty has been reinstated after abolition. Several of these countries justify their retentionist stands on reasons that have hardly been verified empirically. This paper reports findings from a large empirical study on the death penalty in Ghana. The study also examined factors explaining support for death penalty in the African context

Authors

• Kofi Boakye, Anglia Ruskin University

• Justice Tankebe, University of Cambridge