Opinion Leaders’ Views on the Death Penalty

India: Carolyn Hoyle and the DPP worked with Project 39a at the National Law University of Delhi on their research on opinions on the death penalty among former Supreme Court judges. Matters of Judgment (2017) sheds light on the somewhat troubling views of India’s most senior judges.

Bangladesh: Carolyn Hoyle and the DPP worked with the Faculty of Law at the University of Dhaka on their research on opinions on the death penalty among former judges (report forthcoming). 

Comparative work: Carolyn Hoyle and the DPP conducted comparative work on judges’ views on the death penalty in India and Bangladesh. In September 2019, they presented their findings at events in Delhi and Bangalore, and their article on ‘Contradictions in Judicial Support for Capital Punishment in India and Bangladesh: Utilitarian Rationales’ was published by the Asian Journal of Criminology.

Indonesia: Carolyn Hoyle and the DPP are working with the Faculty of Law and the Department of Criminology at the University of Indonesia and an Indonesian NGO, LBH Masyarakat on elite opinion research on the death penalty. They published a feasibility study in 2018 and are currently conducting interviews for a full report to be published in 2020. Outreach work (‘Capital Punishment for Drug Offences in Indonesia: academic and civil society efforts towards abolition’) is currently funded by the University of Oxford Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund.

Eastern Caribbean: Roger Hood and the DPP, with the University of West Indies Faculty of Law and Greater Caribbean for Life and the St Vincent and the Grenadines Human Rights Association and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty conducted a survey of opinion formers in the Eastern Caribbean and Barbados. Their report–‘Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Eastern Caribbean and Barbados: Gathering the views of opinion formers’–was published early in 2020.

Zimbabwe: Carolyn Hoyle and the DPP worked with a Zimbabwean legal NGO, Veritas, and a local research institute (Mass Public Opinion Institute) on a study of opinion leaders’ views on the death penalty. Their report, Time to Abolish the Death Penalty in Zimbabwe: Exploring the Views of its Opinion Leaders was published in June 2020. It included a Foreword by President Mnangagwa and was widely reported in Zimbabwean national press.