All five contemporary practitioners of the death penalty in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)- Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam-- have performed executions on a regular basis over the past few decades. NGO Amnesty International currently classifies each of these nations as death penalty 'retentionists'. However, notwithstanding a common willingness to execute, the number of death sentences passed by courts that are reduced to a term of imprisonment, or where the prisoner is released from custody altogether, through grants of clemency by the executive branch of government, varies remarkably among these neighbouring political allies. Last Chance for Life: Clemency in Southeast Asian Death Penalty Cases explores the patterns which explain why some countries in the region award clemency far more often than others in death penalty cases. Over the period under analysis from 1991 to 2016, the regional outliers were Thailand (with more than 95% of condemned prisoners receiving clemency after exhausting judicial appeals) and Singapore (with fewer than 1% of condemned prisoners receiving clemency). Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam fall at points in between these two extremes. What results is the first research monograph, anywhere in the world, to compare death penalty clemency across national borders using empirical methodology, the latter a systematic collection of clemency data in multiple jurisdictions using archival and 'elite' interview sources. Last Chance for Life is an authoritative resource for legal practitioners, criminal justice policy makers, scholars and activists throughout the ASEAN region and around the retentionist world.

About the Author
Dr Daniel Pascoe is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include pardon and punishment in comparative perspective, Southeast Asian law, Islamic Law and transitional justice. Dr Pascoe graduated with honours degrees in Law and in Asian studies from The Australian National University, before completing an MPhil in Criminology and Criminal Justice and a DPhil in Law as the Keith Murray Graduate Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford. His research has appeared in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the International Review of Victimology, the Asian-Pacific Law and Policy Journal, the Boston University International Law Journal and the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law, among other periodicals.

Reviews
A fascinating and significant contribution ... to the field of criminology. * Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe and Dr Kyle Treiber, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University *
Last Chance for Life is a pleasure to read: well-structured, very clearly written and easy to assimilate. It is also the first authoritative resource on dealth penalty clemency for legal practitioners, policy makers, academics and death penalty abolitionists. * Dr Mai Sato, Director of the Monash University Capital Punishment Impact Initiative *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198809715
Author Daniel Pascoe
Format Hardback
Page Count 362
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 576g
Dimensions(mm) 219mm * 148mm * 26mm