ABSTRACT
The death penalty was for centuries an ordinary and largely uncontested tool for the exercise of government power (see Garland in Chapter 3). How is it then that Europe has turned its back on this punishment, and how is it that the Norwegian government and its people, in the face of such an atrocity as the one described by former Minister of Justice Knut Storberget rejected any call for the death penalty? Does this mean that a moderate criminal justice system without the death penalty is sustainable? Some central questions must be: What are the historical, economic, political and cultural conditions making governance without the death penalty possible? Furthermore, what are the necessary conditions for a criminal justice system without the death penalty to be sustainable over time? Or should the question be whether a criminal justice system with the death penalty can be sustainable in the world today – in its global, international and transnational complexity? Can the death penalty itself be a hazard to a sustainable criminal justice system? These are some of the questions in the forefront in the explorations in this book.
