Executions per country in 2017

Today, the abolitionist position has prevailed worldwide, with most countries being abolitionist (106 countries for all crimes, plus 8 for ordinary crimes only, as of July 2018). The latest countries to abolish the penalty, in 2017-2018, were Burkina Faso and Guatemala (for ordinary crimes only), and Guinea and Mongolia (for all crimes). In 2018, the Roman Catholic Church decided that the death penalty is inadmissible under all circumstances. A number of countries are considered ‘abolitionist in practice’ (28 according to Amnesty International, but the number could be higher depending on how this is defined). Around 56 states still retain the penalty, but fewer than half of those actually carry out executions (23 in 2016 and 2017). The trend towards abolition is not linear. In the United States, support for capital punishment is growing again, after a sharp decline from 1996 to 2016, with 54 % of persons surveyed in favour in 2018. In India, capital punishment has recently been extended to certain types of rape after a series of cases that shocked public opinion across the country and in the wider world.