Book Review: The Executioner’s Men: Los Zetas, Rogue Soldiers, Criminal Entrepreneurs, and the Shadow State They Created

• Author: Robert M. Buffington
• Published date: 01 March 2013
• Date: 01 March 2013
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567712466410
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

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International Criminal Justice Review 23(1)
imprisonment as an alternative punishment and international obligations to abolish the death
penalty. As the title suggests, the subsequent chapters expand past the death penalty in their discus-
sions of punishment and justice.
In attempting to provide a broad reach topically, the table of contents may appear disjointed from
a brief skim. Some readers may be turned off to the large scope of the book, or may seek out a par-
ticular chapter or section (especially since some of the chapters are directed at narrow historical
timeframes and policies or practices in specific locations). However, as different as each chapter
is from the next, they all follow a similar structure and style and the book is well organized. The
advantage in pulling this array of essays into one book is that it provides the opportunity for the
reader to connect themes and think about punishment broadly. State legitimacy, balancing the victim
perspective with justice for the larger public benefit, revenge, forgiveness, crimes that ignite moral
outrage and disgust, the role of religion in a traditional punitive sense and through the reconciliation
lens of restorative justice, and efficiency and effectiveness—to name just a few of the topics debated
and analyzed—are issues scholars often grapple with when trying to understand, justify, and reflect
on punishment and justice. Although the chapters originated from presentations at a human rights
conference, they take an objective stance, reviewing the issues on both sides and providing thought-
ful commentary.
This book is designed for criminologists, sociologists, penologists, psychologists, legal scholars,
legal philosophers, legal historians, and others in related fields. The 24 contributors also have varied
professional backgrounds and are primarily Dutch and Belgian scholars (although other countries,
notably the United States, have contributors or are incorporated as comparisons in many of the
pieces). With the exception of survey research findings on the ethics of sex robotics and preliminary
meta-analysis results on intervention programs in the Netherlands, the book is largely qualitative in
nature.
From the...