Social Work Speaks Abstracts

Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty

NASW’s broad ethical principle that social workers respect the inherent dignity and worth of each person prohibits support of the death penalty. Moreover, as the death penalty has always been and continues to be differentially applied to people who are poor, disadvantaged, of limited mental or intellectual capacity, or from ethnic or racial minority groups, execution goes against the social worker’s Code of Ethics, which holds them responsible for preventing discrimination and eliminating exploitation of any group or class of people. For the individual, infliction of the death penalty permanently forecloses their capacity for reform that is possible even when serving a life sentence. For these reasons, NASW believes that the U.S. government and all state authorities should abolish the death penalty for all crimes and should institute certain interim safeguards pending abolition of the death penalty, including a moratorium on executions, raising the minimum age in which the death penalty may be used to 18, preventing use of the death penalty in cases in which defendants are mentally impaired, and ensuring that capital defendants are represented by trained, experienced, and adequately compensated attorneys.