CQ's Vital Issues Series is a reference collection that provides unparalleled, non-biased analysis of controversial topics debated at the local, state, and federal levels. All sides of an issue are equally covered, and the series delves into gray areas and well-defined positions. The series takes on hot topics that dominate the media, shape election-year politics and confront the American public.

This book covers an issue that has been increasingly in the news since the late 1980’s, when anti-crime and anti-drug legislation saw a flurry of activity. States such as Texas and Arizona have created an international outcry over their executions. Also, recent widespread media coverage of the reassessment of the fairness of the death penalty has continued to flourish both within and outside the United States.

CQ's Vital Issue Series: Capital Punishment includes:

• A CQ Researcher issue, also published by CQ press, that introduces the subject
• In-depth explanation of pertinent politics, policy, and political players on federal, state, and local levels
• An analysis of key for-profit and non-profit business interests
• Discussion of the international reaction to how the U.S. handles the issue.

The book also feature extensive appendices of key documents such as a chronology, bibliographies, Web sites, encyclopedia articles, primary documents, facts, commentaries, policies, and Supreme Court rulings. A valuable series for high school, community college and university students, as well as public library patrons interested in timely issues.

"CQ’s Vital Issues Series offers objective and substantial introductions to contentious issues that currently receive widespread public debate. . . . Perhaps the most important part of this reference work is the appendix that includes an outstanding bibliography of print sources, a bibliography of Internet sources, a section on facts and policies, encyclopedia articles from the International Encyclopedia of Human Rights (see ARBA 2001, entry 570), and selected primary documents relevant to the debate. For anyone interested in the death penalty debate, this reference book should be among the first source consulted."

Ann Chih Lin is associate professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She specializes in American social policy, particularly public policy implementation, poverty, crime, and immigration. She is the author of Reform in the Making: The Implementation of Social Policy in Prison (2000) and the editor, with Sheldon Danziger, of Coping with Poverty: The Social Contexts of Neighborhood, Work, and Family in the African American Community (2000). Lin was a 1999-2000 visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and the 1992-1993 Robert W. Hartley Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

CQ's Vital Issues Series set

CQ's Vital Issues Series: Immigration

CQ's Vital Issues Series: Welfare Reform