The Death Penalty’s Abolition and Infanticide’s Invention

A Neglected Nexus

Bibliographic Data

ID6417352
AuthorsCarolyn Strange (0000-0003-4377-8958, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume40
Issue1
Pages145-162
Publication date2025-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0829-3201 • E-ISSN: 1911-0227
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/cls.2024.36
OpenAlexW4411066366
LanguageEN
References cited19

Decades before Canada abolished the death penalty, it removed infanticide from the Criminal Code ’s offences punishable by death. In 1948, this form of culpable homicide became punishable by imprisonment up to a maximum of three years. Although this statutory invention has been linked to the post-war rise in the pathologization of women’s violence and tied to legislators’ concerns over jury nullification, its nexus with the death penalty’s abolition has been overlooked. If the prospect of capital punishment did not deter women from killing their newborns, could the death penalty be justified for other forms of culpable homicide? Critics who posed this question about neonaticide wedged open the consideration of other forms of homicide and categories of offenders, undermining long standing certainties over the deterrent potency of capital punishment. Rather than a step in the abolition movement, the amendment merits acknowledgment as a significant move against the death penalty

Criminology · Economics · Keynesian economics · Law and economics · Neoclassical economics · Nexus (standard · Political science · Sociology · Computer Science · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Torture, Ethics, and Law

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