The Deliberative Consultation

Abstract

This chapter examines deliberated views on the death penalty among a group of 50 Japanese adults. Attitudes to the death penalty are measured not only by comparing the result of the surveys conducted pre- and post-deliberation on death penalty positions, but also by examining factors that lie behind support and rejection of the death penalty – such as interpretation of new information, belief about the courts, the importance of victims’ families and the weight of offenders’ remorse in qualifying retributive attitudes. The analyses presented here extend findings, and in some cases fill in unanswered gaps, from the two surveys. Indepth analysis of attitude was possible largely due to the design of the deliberative consultation, which provided both quantitative and qualitative data before, during, and after the process of deliberation.