Capital punishment in 2010

The Guardian published an infographic based on statistics Amnesty International compiled on the number of death sentences and executions, by country for the last four years. It's a very pretty picture, but I felt that there was something missing; you might suggest that China gets a bad rap, but because it's much bigger than any other country except India, of course it's going to have a higher execution rate.

It's said that a liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet; I wonder if my opposition to the death penalty is because I haven't suffered from any crimes yet where I'd want the perpetrator to be killed. I've been fortunate; of all my friends and family, I only know of one person to be affected by violent crime. I'll return to that later, but first I wanted to use data to try to examine some of my prejudices about where and why capital punishment was popular. Well, frequent might be a better word.