The Crutch of Ritual: Social Control in the Modern American Capital Punishment System Page: I
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Pellegrino, Alexandra. The Crutch of Ritual: Social Control in the Modern American Capital
Punishment System. Master of Science (Criminal Justice), August 2019, 72 pp., references, 115
titles.
Contemporary American capital punishment contains many processual elements, such as
the prisoner's last meal and the cleansing of his body immediately before death, that serve no
concrete, practical purpose but share a nature with ritual practices. In this project, I utilize a
hermeneutic phenomenological lens to identify and list these ritual elements. I also use concepts
drawn from the structural functionalist tradition to both analyze the specific purposes the
elements serve within individual parts of the death penalty and to discuss the overarching result
of the inclusion of these elements within the process as a whole. Ultimately, I find that the ritual
elements present in the capital punishment process serve a social control purpose, insulating and
reinforcing the death penalty as a whole. Ritual works to do this by controlling the behavior and
image of the prisoner and emotionally soothing both participants of the process and the public
at large.
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Pellegrino, Alexandra Clarke. The Crutch of Ritual: Social Control in the Modern American Capital Punishment System, thesis, August 2019; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1538795/m1/2/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .