Studies Say Death Penalty Deters Crime

The rest of the article can be found here.

Though the last two paragraphs in the quoted part of the article touch on the issue, this still does not answer the question of whether or not it is morally right for society to execute people. But it is interesting that, among those who really understand statistics at least, the question as to the deterrent effect of the death penalty is considered as settled. The opposition to the findings seems to come entirely from those who haven't done any serious statistical analysis, aren't really capable of doing it, and merely dismiss data that tends towards conclusions they don't like. (I have no doubt that precisely the same thing will happen in this thread.) But it is interesting that a major study done by someone who is opposed to the death penalty still shows it to have a very clear effect as a deterrent to crime.

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I still think my idea (well actually got it from Bill O'Reilly) of a work camp in Alaska would be suffient deterent.

If anything was a proper deterrent, crime would have fucking ended.
It never will.

It depends on the personality.

Certain crimes would never end because of insanity of one sort or another, sheer desperation and crimes where the motivation go beyond self...the thief who steals to afford the medical care their child needs for example.

But some crimes would be deterred and isn't that a good thing? Not to mention the 100% effectiveness of stopping repeat offenders that are executed.

But then, maybe a forced labor camp in a tundra or deep in a desert would be just as good if not better as they don't get to escape their conscience. But it would certainly cost more.

The death penalty is a 100% effective deterrent against recidvism.


Those given the death penalty never repeat their crimes.

Not when you factor in the legal costs of killing someone. The costs of appeals make the DP much more expensive than locking someone in a SuperMax for life.

Besides someone has to build those oil pipelines.

Send em to the Moon, let em mine for He3...They don't work, they don't get no air....

There appears to be an echo in here!

^
Hey, a good idea is a good idea.

Ya'll didn't know... Tamar is my evil girly twin.

Now, that's just uncalled for.

And here I thought you were TAMAR'S evil girly twin.

Interesting!

I didn't get that from the text you quoted. It said that several other experts in statistics are "vigorously questioning" the data. I'd have to see either study to decide whether their concerns are justified, but there do seem to be concerns.

One problem in translating this into an argument for policy is that the main study represented in this article apparently distinguishes actual executions from commuted and (I assume also) indefinitely deferred death sentences.

But that's not equivalent to the question: "Do we want a death penalty?"

That would be equivalent to the question: "Assuming we have a death penalty, how many chances do we want to allow for commuting or deferring death sentences?"

I think that one of the main reasons for commuting a death sentence, or indefinitely deferring a death sentence while endless appeals take their course, lies in the radical, irrevocable and emotional nature of the death penalty itself. So arguing for having the death penalty in general within this cultural mindset also entails arguing for further commuted and deferred death sentences -- which make crime statistics rise, according to this article.

To make this an argument for or against the DP in general, we would have to see comparisons between countries that do vs. those that don't have the DP, not between situations with executed vs. commuted sentences.

If you'd kill those crows, they wouldn't tear up your garden anymore.

The death penalty working as a deterrent is just a bonus. Justice and retribution are the main justifications for the death penalty.

But I'll admit this is an interesting new angle on a topic that can never be resolved.

EDIT- to Clyde.

It's ONLY retribution.

And given that, I say the victim's family should do the killing.

I see nothing wrong with having a family member flip the switch. Yet that shouldn't be a requirement. That's where the justice part comes in.

Sure, the DP is expensive but when you factor in the deterrent figures, you actually get a pretty inexpensive way to reduce crime. You also get proportionality of punishment to crime which is always a good thing, IMO.

The inequities of application may or may not be "real" but, of course, deserve investigation.

Actually, no, in the part I quoted it did not say several "other experts in statistics" are vigorously questioning the data. It says "scientists." Not all scientists are experts in statistics.

From the article (though not the part quoted in the opening post):

No, you would have to see comparisons between the exact same societies, with and without the DP. Comparing one country that has the DP to another country that does not will tell you very little, since cultural differences exist from one people to another. Americans are very similar to Europeans in many ways, for example, but there are differences. One of them is that Americans, on the average, are more violent than Europeans. So comparisons between American states that have the DP and European states that do not have it will tell you very little about the DP as a deterrent. (And before anyone asks, I will say that it is an open question as to whether being more violent is "good" or not. It depends on what system of morality--if any--you accept. From a purely evolutionary point of view, it would be extremely difficult to argue that the less violent Europeans, whose future is very compromised demographically, are "superior" to their American cousins.) And the Malagasy are less violent than either the Americans or the Europeans. Madagascar has no DP and very poor security in its prisons, yet violent crimes there are less common than in Europe.

That's why these studies were done in comparing a society to itself, when the DP is practiced there and when it isn't. That, to me, seems to be a much sounder approach than comparing one country to another, when the differences between the societies are going to produce variations in the data that far outweigh and thus distort beyond recognition any variations due only to the absence or presence of the DP.

I would agree with you, however, that, studies such as this do not determine, in and of themselves, whether or not the DP is valid. The answer to that question is wider, more complicated, and based on more than the sole factor of whether or not the DP has an effect as a determent. What is interesting here is only what the study shows: The oft-proclaimed argument of some of those who are opposed to the DP, that it has no effect in deterring crime, is shown to be false. That does not prove, or even tend to prove, that the other arguments of those who oppose the DP, are not valid. That is why there is still room for debate on the subject.

But the evidence of quite a few carefully done studies is unanimous: The DP does in fact deter crime.

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I would have to know more about the methodology of the studies to say one way or the other. The part of the article mentioned critics had a problem with its methodology. While I don't know all that much about statistics, I don't see how you can say, "While there was a death penalty, there were X murders. Once there was a moratorium, there were X+4 murders. Therefore the death penalty would have prevented 4 murders."

It also seems a valid point on its face that the death penalty can only prevent death-eligible murders, which the vast majority are not.

Finally, I'm not sure how this deterrent effect of the death penalty is supposed to work. Are would-be murderers really supposed to be thinking, "Well, I'd kill this person, but I might get the needle. If I were going to get a mere life in prison without the possibility of parole, I'd have gone for it, though."?

BTW, here's a link for the executive summary of the critique of these studies.

As I understood it from my quick read, according to the authors of the critique (a Yale and a Wharton professor), the people making these claims that deterrence works used strange measures badly and if you look at a longer period or data in a different way, you could actually make the argument that the death penalty costs an additional life per execution.

I have two ideas.

1) Ice mines, think Rura Penthe, but without the useful dilithium.

2) Bee domes. Bees will be kept in a large dome like structure. People who piss me off get sent inside.

Yes, it's long been settled, in quite the opposite way from what this article seems to indicate.

It's very easy to screw up a study like this, intentionally or otherwise. In particular, more death sentences are, of course, handed down when there are more murders; because executions lag behind sentencing and crime is cyclic in nature, executions tend to happen when murder rates are not at their highest, or even when they're at their lowest. There's always going to be a negative correlation between current executions and murder rate, and any study trying to show a causal relation between the two is highly sensitive to choice of controls and is inherently suspect. Similarly, pardons are more likely to be granted when the murder rate is at its lowest and clemency is more politically feasible, and therefore periods of high clemency are expected to be followed by increasing murder rates, even if there's no causal relation.

Really, if you're looking for a deterrent effect of having the death penalty the places to look are at current levels of death sentences, controlled for differing state-by-state historic rates of sentences being overturned; changes in murder rate following changes in the death penalty law as compared to changes in murder rates in locales with similar crime and economic conditions where the law has not changed; comparative trends in murder rates in states with and without the death penalty; and other measures that don't introduce the problems of controlling for a widely variable time lag between sentencing and execution and coming up with a plausible mechanism for explaining how deterrent effect arises at all--why would anyone be deterred by the fact that sentences imposed 10-20 years ago are finally being carried out?

An early version of the study referred to is downloadable here (more recent versions are available only by paid download at a quick check). It uses executions rather than death sentences, which pretty much means the study was designed to find a deterrent effect whether or not one exists. It also has a very interesting Figure 1 which shows that changes in murder rates in death penalty states more or less follow the exact same pattern, albeit at a higher average murder rate, as changes in murder rates in non death penalty states, which makes no sense if there's a deterrent effect that fluctuates along with fluctuating execution rates in death penalty states.

All in all, another glaring example of people who are seeking to provide political support for the death penalty via academic legitimization trying to take advantage of statistical ignorance among policy makers. John Lott--the fraud of More Guns, Less Crime infamy--would be proud.

Those studies don't change the fact that there is a good chance that innocent people get executed. When we can be 100% positive that a specific person committed a specific crime, then get back to me. Until then...leave people the right to take responsibility of protecting themselves, and we'll deal with any extra murder attempts that commuting/banning the death penalty will produce.

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that (whether it's their fault or not) Black Americans commit more violent crimes than White Americans can it?

If it were a race neutral procedure, black killers would get the death penalty at roughly the same rate as white killers, regardless of whether the raw number of blacks who commit murder were more, equal or less than the number of white killers. Killers of blacks would get the death penalty at roughly the same rates as killers of whites.

The Death Penalty Information Center has a list of studies claiming to show that killers of whites are far more likely to get the death penalty than killers of blacks.

I'm not sure. My first reaction is to say white, but if you're black you've got people like Jesse Jackson and groups like the NAACP watching your back during appeal.

I'm not going to sit here and claim that there is no racism here, and that it doesn't play any roll in crime and punishment, but to say that we use the DP only as an excuse to kill black people is a lie.

There are white people on death row. That exposes the lie in your statement. Tennessee just killed one a week or two ago. White guy.

It was a service that I, as a citizen and taxpayer of Tennessee, was all too happy to provide.

So that exposes the DP as mearly a way for whites to slowly genocide blacks? Or is it not for genocide, but for entertainment purposes? Or maybe it's just a way to show the whites that the .gov is doing something about crime....killing black people.