Most countries around the world have **abolished** the death penalty; meaning they *used* to have it, but have banned it, with bans generally coming into force from the 1970s-1990s. These days even countries which do allow a death penalty rarely use it.
When people discuss the pros and cons of the death penalty today, they generally argue in absolutist terms, e.g.: the risk of executing innocents, that the state shouldn’t kill its own citizens, lifetime incarceration is worse than the release of death etc. But clearly historical societies felt the death penalty *was* appropriate. So what changed in the mid-to-late 20th century to make countries favour abolishment?
In: 4
The short answer for Europe: WWII
Long answer: So in Europe the groups in favour of the death penalty pre world war 2 were mostly traditionalist right leaning pro-nomian political groups and those opposed were mostly progressive reformist-protestant groups. The latter had an overlap with socialist leaning groups who opposed the death penalty in theory but supported its use (under Lenin and Stalin in “crisis / emergency periods”) in practice. During world war 2 the Nazis had effective control over most of the continent and actively courted the support of traditionalist right wing groups (after all this was how they came to power in Germany, by absorbing the (democratic) nationalist party).
After the war these groups were often accused of collaborationism/ treason, a crime which typically carried the death penalty, as a result across Europe the more right leaning groups/parties started to support abolition of the death penalty, particularly in Germany where the leadership of the reformed (anti-Nazi) national party had absorbed at lot of former rank and file working class/ right wing Nazi supporters/members but also a lot of lower middle Nazi politicians. Joining them were left leaning groups such as the communist/socialist parties, which were theoretically progressive but in reality were worried that during the cold war the death penalty would be applied to them as soviet agents/sympathisers. So they swapped from pro death penalty in some circumstances to abolition in all cases.
The only groups which stayed consistent were progressive groups who had been opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds, who expanded their reach during the post war consensus and with the wide spread adoption of human rights legislation, which itself was a reaction to the Nazis inhuman actions.
This created a lot of political pressure in European countries to abolish the death penalty even in countries like the UK which never had much extremist presence. (as their right wing were anti-german and anti-nazi and left wing were more soc-dem reformers than pro soviet leftists). As a result of this the European union also included death penalty abolition as a condition of membership and so when the post soviet sates joined in the early 2000s they too abolished the death penalty.
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