Is capital punishment a deterrent to crime?

Question

What are the pros and cons to this?

Answer 1

A June 10 Associated Press article pointed to statistical studies that claimed to directly link numbers of executions with numbers of murders prevented, including a 2003 study from the University of Colorado at Denver and studies from 2003 and 2006 by researchers at Emory University. But follow-up studies by top social scientists soundly reject those conclusions as well as the flawed methodology used to reach them. Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on statistics, testified to Congress that the Emory and Denver studies were "fraught with numerous technical and conceptual errors," and "fail[ed] to reach the demanding standards of social science."

The truth is that it might be impossible to determine a true statistical relationship between homicides and executions because the number of executions is so small compared to the number of homicides. But what we can say with certainty is that there is no legitimate statistical evidence of deterrence.

John Donohue, Yale Law School professor and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Justin Wolfers, Wharton School of Business professor and Research Affiliate at the NBER, analyzed the same data used in the Emory and Denver studies, as well as other studies by the same researchers and many other nationwide reports. They found that if anything, executions increase homicides, concluding: "The view that the death penalty deters is still the product of belief, not evidence ... On balance, the evidence suggests that the death penalty may increase the murder rate."

Donohue and Wolfers analyzed data from the 2006 study by the Emory researchers using non-death penalty states as a control group, a basic statistical tool used to study causation not used in the Emory study. When they compared death penalty states with non-death penalty states, they found no evidence of any effect of executions on murder rates, either up or down. Donohue and Wolfers also analyzed the data from the 2003 Emory study that concluded that each execution prevented 18 murders and found that the reduction or increase in murders was actually more dependent on other factors used in the study than whether or not the states had the death penalty. For example, when Donohue and Wolfers slightly redefined just one of the factors included by the Emory researchers, they found that each execution caused 18 murders.

Donohue and Wolfers also recomputed data from the Denver study of select states to account for overall crime trends, a factor not included in the Denver study, and reached inconclusive results. For two states included in the Denver study that had abolished the death penalty, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Donohue and Wolfers found that the homicides rates actually fell after capital punishment was ended.

Other studies also refute the deterrence theory. For example, researchers Lawrence Katz, Steven Levitte and Ellen Shustorovich analyzed state data between 1950 and 1990 and did not find a correlation between the death penalty and crime rates. Moreover, one of the Emory researchers, Joanna Shepherd, published a state study of her own and found that while the death penalty deterred murder in six states, it actually increased murder in 13 states, and had no effect on the murder rate in eight states.

Other statistical analyses show that states with the death penalty do not have the lowest murder rates in the country. In fact, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, states without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates than states with the death penalty, even when comparing neighboring states. In addition, while southern states account for over 80 percent of the executions in this country, they have consistently had the highest murder rate of the nation's four regions.

Comparing American and Canadian statistics is also telling. While Canada has not had a single execution since 1972 and the United States has executed over 1,000 people in that time, the homicide rates in the United States and Canada have closely tracked each other. If anything, Canada's experience suggests that ending executions leads to a drop in the murder rate.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

I suppose it could be, but I doubt that it often is. It depends on the crime and the potential criminal.

Since capital punishment is a sentence reserved for some of the most severe or horrible crimes, then it cannot really serve to deter "crime" in general. Since it is only used to "punish" these crimes, I propose that the criminals who are guilty of these crimes are not afraid and hence not deterred by the capital punishment.

Historically, capital punishment was used as much to set an example or send a warning to others as it was to "punish" the criminal. It was also often done in a public exhibition.

Other than the technicality that it causes harm to or detracts from the criminal, I think that to call it "punishment" is inaccurate. I do not think that it "punishes" the criminal, but rather "rewards" the victim(s) and/or their survivors with the criminal's death, and removes the criminal from society.

A life sentence is more severe punishment than the death sentence, although these days many death sentences are never carried out and the prisoner ends up dying of natural causes in prison, having waited in suspense for many years, which I suppose is some punishment in its own way. I suppose there may be some variance in the cost of a prisoner given a death sentence and one given a lifelong prison sentence.

Jail or prison, the removal of privileges, the separation from society, the inability to decide for yourself, these are supposed to be deterrents to crime. Yet there are still people who see jail and/or prison as a meal ticket and a place to live.

Answer 4

Well, the pros would be that it would deter a person who does not want to die from committing a serious crime, but the cons would be that criminals who have a death wish would commit a heinous crime and hope for the death penalty,

so really, I don't know if capital punishment is really worth it because most of the time, having them rot and die in jail is really the best punishment.

Answer 5

The deterrent effect is questionable at best. Violent crime rates are actually higher in death penalty states. This may seem counterintuitive, and there are many theories about why this is (Ted Bundy saw it as a challenge, so he chose Florida – the most active execution state at the time – to carry out his final murder spree). Personally, I think it has to do with the hypocrisy of taking a stand against murder…by killing people. The government becomes the bad parent who says, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

Among the other good reasons to be anti-capital punishment:

1. For me, the most compelling by far is this: Sometimes our legal system gets it wrong. Look at all the criminals who are being released after years of imprisonment because they were exonerated by DNA evidence. No matter how rare it is, our government should not risk executing one single innocent person.

Really, that should be reason enough for most people. If you need more, read on:

2. Because of the extra expense of prosecuting a DP case and the appeals process (which is necessary - see reason #1), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute prisoners than to imprison them for life.

3. There’s also an argument to be made that death is too good for the worst of our criminals. Let them wake up and go to bed every day of their lives in a prison cell, and think about the freedom they DON’T have, until they rot of old age. When Ted Bundy was finally arrested in 1978, he told the police officer, “I wish you had killed me.”

4. The U.S. government is supposed to be secular, but for those who invoke Christian law in this debate, you can find arguments both for AND against the death penalty in the Bible. For example, Matthew 5:38-39 insists that violence shall not beget violence. James 4:12 says that God is the only one who can take a life in the name of justice. Leviticus 19:18 warns against vengeance (which, really, is what the death penalty amounts to). In John 8:7, Jesus himself says, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Answer 6

Yes, actually studies have proven this to be true, that capital punishment does deter crime.
Indeed, a 2003 study, published in the Journal of Law and Economics – and reviewed in 2006 – determined that capital punishment did deter homicides. The study investigated:

. . . the impact of the execution rate, commutation and removal rates, homicide arrest rate, sentencing rate, imprisonment rate, and prison death rate on the rate of homicide. The results show that each additional execution decreases homicides by about five, and each additional commutation increases homicides by the same amount, while an additional removal from death row generates one additional murder.

This is not the only academic study that concluded capital punishment’s deterrent effect:

A 2003 study by Emory University Economics Department Chairman Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Emory Professors Paul Rubin and Joanna Shepherd stated that “our results suggest that capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect.”
Another 2003 study, by Clemson University’s Joanna Shepherd, established that each execution deters an average of five murders and that postponing executions reduced the deterrent effect.
A 2002 Senate report declared there is a great deal of proof that capital punishment is a deterrent. The report affirms, “. . . there is overwhelming evidence that capital punishment saves a substantial number of innocent lives, deterring probably thousands of murders in the United States every year.”
A November 2001 paper, presented to the American Society of Criminology said, “There has been a great deal of research conducted by criminologists on the effectiveness of the death penalty in preventing future homicides . . . While many of these studies find no deterrent effect there are other well designed research reports that reach the opposite conclusion.”
There have been studies validating the efficacy of capital punishment for more than thirty years, yet, if all you knew was what the mainstream media reported you would think science had proven otherwise.

The good news, though, is that despite the well-funded, anti-capital punishment misinformation campaign, helped by a liberal media, the public still favors capital punishment

Answer 7

people can twist statistics and make them show any thing they want , but if you take a state who don't have capital punishment and determine how many murders per thousand are committed, then compare another state that has capital punishment and how many murders are committed per thousand the states who don't have capital punishment have a lower murder rate than the ones who have capital punishment, also when some one is executed there will be several murders in that state and it has been said by leading author ties that the execution seems to have the murder effect on many people, also, how many people think of the consequences when they kill some one? if a person thought they would get caught they would not commit the crime to begin with,
also , in view of the fact that so many people in the U,S, have been convicted of a crime they did not do sould certainly have a bearing on capital punishment,such as the 47 men on death row in Illl, and then 35 were proven Innocent by the fed;s
I feel any juror who convicts any person shares the guilt when the man is proven innocent ,

Answer 8

properly, it definitely deters the performed criminal from committing to any extent further crimes. yet considering that repeat murderers are very uncommon, statistically that may no longer so significant. countless learn have shown that it particularly is the fact of punishment, no longer the severity, that has the main ability deterrent effect on crime. A nerve-racking form of persons are prepared to kill to end some objective, yet maximum of them won't kill in the event that they comprehend the top result's they are going to be caught and punished. And in case you think of you heavily isn't caught, what do you care in the event that they motel to the main barbaric medieval punishments conceivable? It heavily isn't YOU getting drawn and quartered, suited? Crimes of interest are in a distinctive class; as are mass murderers. a number of those crimes might purely be prevented via pre-emptive execution, and that i'm noticeably optimistic you do no longer choose to pass there.

Answer 9

It is not. The answer you received from jurydoc has it right. No reputable study has shown the death penalty to be a deterrent. The keyword is “reputable.”

Unless you are a statistician or a mathematician, the studies by econometricians are hard to follow. Their findings make nice sound bites but they are wrong.

Easiest to understand, however, is the fact that homicide rates are consistently higher in states and regions with death penalty than in those without it.

Answer 10

There is no sign of that, nor does it seem likely. Example, there were 16,137 murders in 2004, according to the FBI, but only 125 death sentences were handed out, and 59 persons - most of whom were convicted a decade earlier - were executed.

There are no direct tests of deterrence among murderers, nor are there studies showing their awareness of executions in their own state, much less in far-away states. There is no evidence that if aware of the possibility of execution, a potential murderer would rationally decide to forego homicide and use less lethal forms of violence.

As a matter of fact, murder rates overall are higher in states that have the death penalty.

Finances--The total cost to the state of one execution runs about $4 million, versus life imprisonment cost of about $17,000 a year; a 40-year sentence would total $680,000.