about
Capital Punishment Justice Project
Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP) stands for a world without the death penalty.
Our work is twofold:
We provide direct assistance to people and families who face the death penalty; and
We develop legal and policy solutions that help save lives.
Our Board Our People Our Partners
Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP) stands for a world without the death penalty.
Our work is twofold:
We provide direct assistance to people and families who face the death penalty; and
We develop legal and policy solutions that help save lives.
Our Board
Our Team
Our Partners
CPJP was initially founded in 2001 in Melbourne, Australia, by criminal barristers Richard Bourke and Nick Harrington, to provide legal representation and humanitarian assistance to those at risk of execution in the US.
As two relatively new barristers at the Melbourne Bar, they had the idea to start an Australian body that would assist in opposing the death penalty and assist people at risk of suffering the death penalty. Bourke had recently been working in the US as a volunteer intern on death penalty cases in the Louisiana criminal justice system. His experience led him, with Harrington, to establish Reprieve Australia.
Two decades later: same challenge, different region
More than
90%
of the world’s executions take place in Asia
Today our focus has shifted towards challenging the death penalty in Asia – a region where more than 90 percent of the world’s executions take place. Australia has identified abolition of the death penalty as one of its human rights priority areas, and we see the work we do as imperative to ensuring that Australia is a leading voice on abolition.
CPJP is proud to have helped build a community of well-informed and well-supported advocates in the Asia Pacific region.
Together we assist in the sharing of knowledge and the formulation of a collaborative reform agenda, and march step-by-step towards a world where the death penalty no longer exists.
Death penalty around the world
2,052
The number of death sentences recorded globally in 2021
Amnesty International Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2021 (2022), 12.
500
Estimated number of women worldwide currently on death row
Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Judged for More than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty, (September 2018) 4.
“I believe capital punishment is the cruellest and most inhumane response to crime. My opposition to capital punishment is universal, and it's not just when Australian lives are at stake.
The death penalty is invariably associated with the miscarriage of justice, the inevitable consequence being the execution of innocents and the disproportionate execution of the poor and of ethnic and religious minorities. Clearly, no legal system is free of error, but the death penalty is irreversible.
As long as the death penalty exists innocent people will be executed.”