Capital punishment often referred to as the death penalty has been used as a method of crime deterrence since the earliest societieshistorical records show that even the most ancient primitive tribes utilized methods of punishing wrongdoers including taking their lives to pay for the crimes they committed. Amnesty international list of abolitionist and retentionist countries report act 50 01 99 april 1999 d baker a descriptive profile and socio historical analysis of female executions in the united states 1632 1997 10 3 women and criminal justice 57 1999 r bohm deathquest an introduction to the theory and practice of capital punishment in the united . A brief history of capital punishment in britain british forms of punishment from as early as the anglo saxon era right up to 1965 when the death penalty was the bloody code britains bloody code was the name given to the legal system between the late 17th and early 19th capital