ith Texas averaging one executions per week.
However, it should be noted that capital punishment in the United States has become more humane, with the Supreme court banning forms of the death penalty deemed cruel and unusual (Capital). Idaho and Utah still have the firing squad as a means of execution, but most states use death by lethal injection or the electric chair. Most frequently, lethal injection is used because it is more "esthetic" and is the least painful. This is in line with the more humane treatment of prisoners as "civilization" progresses.
Part of the emotive and ostentatious punishment Pratt is talking about takes place in the courtroom, where now victims and their families can face the perpetrators and express their outrage to them directly, as in the recent case of the BTK killer in Kansas. There is an increasing feeling that the punishment ought to bring some kind of satisfaction to the grieving victims, rather than just be about the principles of balanced justice and the public interest (Capital). Prosecutors even structure cases so that the emphasis is on justice for the victims rather than punishment for the crime. Victim impact statements are now a common part of a trial. Families are also invited to watch executions.
A study in Scotland by SACRO (2002) found that the public do not want harsher conditions for prisoners, but they do want a penal system which is effective in preventing crime. However, a survey carried out in 2002 by for the Justice 1 Committee of the Scottish Parliament found six in ten people did not know much about what happened to people when they appeared in court, and 8 in ten knew very little about Scotland's prisons and were basing their ideas on what they heard through the media, and on fictional representations of what went on "inside." They also know very little about the sentencing options open to the courts, and only one percent of the people surveyed knew much ab...