Resources for Teachers and Students on Bianca Jagger
Prepare: The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the
U.S. Department of Justice maintains a listing of capital
punishment statistics. Please visit their website
to view an executive summary of their most recent findings.
While exploring this site, pay close attention to breakdowns
of persons under sentence of death, as well as actual executions,
according to race. In terms of per-capita statistics, is
their racial inequality in terms of how the death penalty
is allocated in the United States of America?
Read:
Although Bianca Jagger has been active in campaigning for
human rights on a slate of issues ranging from death squads
to mass rapes, for her Architects
of Peace article she chose to write about the continuance
of the death penalty within the United States, especially
as it applies to teenagers.
Explore: Bianca Jagger starts off her Architects
of Peace essay with the statement that the United States
is the only democracy in the Western world that continues
to execute its citizens. Is this true? What about the non-Western
world? Using the internet and library resources, find out
the current status of the death penalty in the following
ten countries: Mexico, England, Russia, Japan, China, Norway,
El Salvador, Germany, Brazil, Australia. Note the year that
the death penalty was abolished in countries where capital
punishment is no longer an option.
Write: In her Architects of Peace essay, Bianca
Jagger claims that the execution of criminals serves only
"to complete the cycle of violence." Is violence
cyclic in nature? Is there a relationship between Jagger's
point that the United States is the only democracy of the
Western world that continues to execute its citizens, and
the fact that violent crime is so much more prevalent in
the United States than in other Western democracies? Is
it realistic to assume that steps to break this circle of
violence, such as eliminating the death penalty, would ultimately
result in a less violent society? Write a three-to-five
page concept paper where you explore Jagger's concept of
a cycle of violence in terms of its practical ramifications
for domestic peace.
Extend: Amnesty International USA calls the death
penalty the "the ultimate, irreversible denial of human
rights." Their website contains a page devoted to the
death
penalty, where it's possible to take action, usually
in the form of joining letter-writing campaigns, both on
specific death penalty cases and toward the abolition of
the death penalty worldwide. Among other initiatives, they
have a specific campaign to stop
child executions.
Additional Resource: The School
of Criminal Justice at the State University of New
York (Albany Campus) has initiated a Capital Punishment
Research Initiative dedicated "to conducting and/or
supporting empirical and historical study of issues involving
the ultimate penal sanction."
Biography of Bianca
Jagger
