It’s a Southern Thing: Honor on Death Row

A new Canadian study finds a plethora of unregretful — but very polite — murderers and other occupants of death row in prisons in the region of the United States of America knowns as “The South”:

“Honor on Death Row — Apology, Remorse, and the Culture of Honor in the U.S. South,” Judy Eaton, SAGE Open, epub April 8, 2014. (Thanks to investigator Prank Patalong for bringing this to our attention.) The author, at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, Ontario, Canada, explains:

“The Southern United States is described as having a culture of honor, an argument that has been used to explain higher crime rates in the Southern United States than in the rest of the country…. (Our) data came from the final statements that offenders on death row made before they were executed. Results showed that, compared with offenders executed in the non-Southern United States, offenders executed in the South more often apologized for their crimes in their final statements, but they were not necessarily more remorseful.”

Here’s detail from the study: