Death Work is about executions. I ve studied this grim topic for about a decade
now. My first concern was with the character of life on death row， where con-
demned prisoners await the outcome of their legal appeals. In this book 1 build on
my earlier research， studying the executions that for more and more prisoners end
the long， lonely wait on death row. It is in the death chamber that the condemned
and their executioners make capital punishment a social reality. My aim is to place
that fatal connection in historical perspective， and to probe its psychological and
moral significance.
In a perverse sort of way， this is a timely topic. For roughly a decade， from the
late sixties to the late seventies， there was a moratorium on executions， backed by
the authority of the Supreme Court. This was the culmination of a gradual but
persistent decline in the use of the death penalty in the Western world during the
twentieth century. It appeared that executions would forever pass from the Amer-
ican scene. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
In 1977， the moratorium on carrying out the death sentence ended with the well
publicized execution of Gary Gilmore. Since then， more than a hundred people have
been put to death， most of them in the past few years. Some twenty-three hundred
prisoners are presently confined on death rows across the nation. Most have lived
under sentence of death for years， in some cases a decade or more. Many of them
are coming to the end of the legal appeals process. It is fair to say that executions
will be with us for the foreseeable future.
For better or worse， the modern death penalty is a man s affair. Of the prisoners
executed recently， only one， less than 1 percent， was a woman; fewer than 1 percent
of the prisoners waiting to die are women. More women were executed in the past，
especially during the infamous witch hunts， but so far as 1 can determine， in every
historical period women have been executed for crimes at substantially lower rates
than men. I am aware of no instance， at any time in history， of a woman serving as
an executioner. Certainly none of today s executioners are women. To be sure，
women staff members may take on supporting roles， particularly when the con-
demned prisoner is a women， but their involvement stops at that point. According-
ly， my narration maintains a generic male perspective except where it is obviously
inappropriate to do so.
The execution process today is distinctively mechanical， impersonal， and
ultimately dehumanizing. This procedure may be routine， but it can never be
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