The death penalty as a deterrent to crime: evidence and arguments

¶ … Death Penalty Act as a Deterrent to Crime? (Yes)

In a 1997 speech, Governor George Pataki of New York State declared the death penalty the cure to New York's ills. In this speech, he echoed the arguments of death penalty supporters, stating that within one year after the reinstatement of the death penalty violent crime rates dropped dramatically. This convincing speech echoes the voices of other death penalty supporters who claim that the death penalty is a deterrent to violent crime. These claims are based on sociological studies that suggest a connection between the death penalty and lower crime rates. However, recently these studies have come under scrutiny and are making way for a new generation of studies that fail to support the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. The following research will examine both sides of the issue in order to determine if the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, or just another waste of taxpayer money.

Following Governor Pataki's impassioned speech, a series of research studies were launched that collectively supported the decision by New York to reinstate the death penalty. However, the argument over the death penalty does not only affect New York. The issues surrounding the death penalty inflame passions in every state in the union. Concerns over the results of studies supporting the death penalty stem from technical flaws and conceptual errors in their design. One of the key errors in these studies was that the researchers failed to account for all relevant factors that drive murder rates. This type of error makes it difficult determine causal relationships. Therefore, a majority of the studies must be considered inconclusive, despite their claims to the contrary.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the murder rate remained almost unchanged from 2001 to 2002. In these crimes, the race of the victims was split 49% white and 49% black. However, the victims in death penalty cases were nearly 81% white. In 76% of all murder cases, the victims knew the offenders. Arguments were the most cited circumstances leading to the murder. These statistics do not support the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent. The argument that the death penalty is a deterrent assumes that the person committing the crime is in a rational state of mind in which they can consider the consequences of their actions. When two people are in an argument, seldom are they rational. They often say and do things that they later regret, including commit murder. That is the nature of an argument.

When one turns from sociological studies to econometric models, the results on the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent to murder are mixed. Both sides of the issues can be accused of citing studies that support their particular point-of-view, while ignoring any evidence to the contrary. Regardless of one's opinion, it is important to examine the various studies on the issue critically. As we have seen, sociological studies failed to consider confounding variables that would render the results inconclusive. However, some claim that econometrics provide a more solid framework for the study of an issue that contains many variables. Let us examine several research models.

Comparative Studies

The problem with this controversial issue is that there are several different approaches to the problem from an academic standpoint. The comparative research approach compares the statistics of states that have the death penalty with those that do not. Comparative studies consistently demonstrate that the death penalty has little or no effect on preventing murders. One of the most famous of these studies was conducted by Sellin at the American Law Institute in Philadelphia. This study retains its credibility due to the ability to reproduce the results using new data as it becomes available.

Sellin compared the murder rates of Texas, California and New York. Texas had the highest number of executions at that time. California has executed ten and New York did not have the death penalty at that time. Sellin concluded that the death penalty had little effect on deterring crime. Archer and Gartner examined fourteen countries that chose to eliminate the death penalty and found that the homicide rate in these countries did not rise, as would be expected if the death penalty were truly a deterrent to crime. The findings of Fessenden (2000) support these findings as well.

Econometric Studies

Comparative studies derive their credibility from consistency in results. Econometric methods fail in their ability to produce consistent results. Supporters of the death penalty can find a plethora of studies to support their position when they look at econometric studies. The quandary is how one can achieve such different results on the same topic. Either the death penalty deters murder or it does not. There is no realistic way that both can be right. However, sorting out conflicting results from varied study methods is difficult when one considers econometric studies.

One of the key problems with econometric studies is that they rely on a sufficient amount of data to eliminate potential biases. However, there is little data available with which to perform a regression analysis on the death penalty. There is too little data and too many ways to manipulate the data to one's advantage. It is difficult to create an econometric model that includes all variables and with the proper weight attached to each. The omission of variables or emphasis of one variable over another can significantly skew the results of an econometric model.

Econometrics works best when all variables, except the one being studied are a constant. However, in the real world, this is difficult to achieve. This factor accounts for the differences in econometric models. For instance, Texas has more executions per year than any other state. According to Goertzel, Texas accounts for 1/2 of all executions in the United States. Including Texas in the data set can significantly skew the results. Econometric studies are most often cited by supporters of the death penalty due to their acceptance in other fields. There are a number of econometric studies the support connection between executions and drops in homicide rates However, as we have seen, econometric studies may not provide the most accurate picture of the effects of the death penalty on crime

How do we Decide Who is Right?

As we have seen, the results obtained in studies of whether the death penalty deters crime or not depend on the type of study method that one wishes to employ and the data that they wish to include. Supporters of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime can find sufficient study results to support their position. Another way to examine this issue would be to look at court records on the issue. Unfortunately, this method does not yield any better results than the methods already mentioned.

The problem with examining court records is that they only tell us about crimes that actually occurred. They tell us nothing about how many did not occur, which is the real question that is being asked. We can look at crime rates, the numbers only reflect cases where crime was not deterred. Therefore, we must rely on statistical methods to lead us to the answer to the question of whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime.

According to the FBI, the murder rate in the South increased by 2.1%, yet these states accounted for 82% of all executions since 1975. According to the same report, the murder rate in the Northeast decreased by almost 5%. Northeastern states account for less than 1% of the executions in the U.S. These results are contrary to what one would expect if the death penalty were a deterrent to crime. In fact, they are the opposite that one would expect. The states that had the most executions experienced an increase in murder rates during the study period.

There are several possible explanations for this trend. The first, is that there may be no real correlation between the death penalty and crime deterrence. The second is that the demographics of the south, versus that of the northeast may account for other contributing factors to the crime rate. Supporters of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime often speak as if that is the only factor involved in the increase or decrease in crime rates. However, criminologists know that the commission of crime involves more factors than the fear of punishment. This is especially true for crimes of passion.

Texas has the highest number of executions of any state in the union. Therefore, it has been suggested that if a connection between the death penalty and crime deterrence existed, it would be more evident in Texas more than in any other state. However, studies were unable to conclude that there was any connection between the number of executions and patterns of murders in Texas. The number of murders remained steady over the study time-period, at best.

Conclusion

In order to support the death penalty as a deterrent to crime, one would have to find definitive evidence that the death penalty does indeed deter crime. However, the numbers used to report murder rates only tell us the number of crimes that have occurred. They tell us nothing about crimes that were never committed because of fear of the death penalty. The conundrum is that there is no realistic way to measure something that did not happen in the general population, at least in a way that would be credible from a scientific point-of-view.

Those that support the death penalty tend to place more emphasis on the credibility of econometric methods of analysis. They can find many studies to support their position among this group of analyses. They discredit comparative methods of study that do not support their position. Both proponents and their opposition have attempted to reduce the issue of whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder to one of credibility of the research findings. However, this argument fails, as there are flaws in all of the methodologies used to study the issue to date. In some cases, it would appear that the death penalty actually increases the murder rate, as we saw in the South. Many of the studies found during the course of this research suffered from attempting to make inferences and draw causal relationships, when in fact, there were too many variables unaccounted for. They are inconclusive at best, therefore cannot tell us anything about the connection between the death penalty and trends in murder rates.