AND THEY HAVE A VERY LOW RECIDIVISM RATE:

Hangings Are Meant to Kill Efficiently (MARIA CHENG, 1/15/07, AP)

There is nothing kind or gentle about a hanging. It is a process scientifically designed to break the neck and choke a person to death as efficiently as possible.

In the recent Iraqi executions, former president Saddam Hussein and two of his accomplices, his half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were hanged from a gallows.

In such judicial hangings, the victims are typically dropped a distance greater than their height through a trapdoor. At this point, the rope becomes rigid, and the force of the noose should break the victim's neck, causing immediate paralysis and unconsciousness.

The procedure causes a classic "hangman's fracture" -- a break between the head and the neck, effectively snapping the upper cervical spine. In most cases, the victim dies of asphyxiation.

Though nobody really knows how long it takes a person to die from hanging, experts say it is probably anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes.

In judicial hangings, as opposed to suicides, there is significant damage to the spinal cord. If the victims fall more than the prescribed distance, they may even pick up enough speed that the noose itself decapitates them, as happened Monday to the former Iraqi dictator's half brother Barzan Ibrahim.