Today is the 12th annual World Day Against the Death Penalty. This year the focus is on mental health. The message the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty hopes to get across is that too many prisoners who are mentally ill or intellectually disabled are being executed rather than receiving treatment to address the condition that is the underlying cause of the crime. Many of us wish that our country would join other industrialized countries in abolishing the death penalty totally; many others view executing a person who is mentally ill or the mental age of a child as barbaric.
For more information about this day and topic, and for what you can do, go to http://www.worldcoalition.org/worldday.html.