Capital Punishment Deterrence Hypothesis: Some

¶ … Capital Punishment Deterrence Hypothesis: Some New

Insights and Empirical Evidence." Eastern Economic Journal. 30 (2):

The debate over punishment as a deterrent to crime is a question that has been part of the societal debate on criminal justice since the first cities were founded. Punishment is seen as a penalty inflicted on an individual through some sort of organized, society, or judicial procedure after being duly convicted of a crime to that society. Crime is seen as any sort of act that has been banned or forbidden by that society's laws that causes harm to an individual or society as a whole (Gibbs, 1975). One of the central issues regarding punishment was even debated in Ancient Greece reviewing the rights of the individual (for them, male property owners). Crime was dealt with swiftly and severely, while there was due process of a sort, it is clear that the deterrence for major crimes -- death or death by torture, was enough to keep crime at bay (Dargie, 2007). There are many different views, but at the heart of the debate lies the question "Does punishment deter crime?" The goal is to find out the most effective way to prevent crime so that punishment is unnecessary.

Society must have law in order for individuals to exist together. Similarly, society must have a way to punish someone who commits a crime or there are no consequences for anti-social behavior. Sociologically, then, there are four different justifications for punishment: retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation and societal protection. Which side of the debate one is on is usually determined by how each individual justifies punishment, the severity of the crime (e.g. robbing a bank with a firearm, murder, or a white collar crime like embezzlement) (Siegel, 2008).

Retribution is punishment given in response to the crime, or the "eye for an eye" model, one of the oldest definitions, dating back at least as far as Biblical times. In principle retribution calls for the punishment to be as severe the crime committed. While this can be perceived as an equal punishment, opponents of this view argue it is just a small step above barbarism, and it does not help to reform the criminal which can lead to recidivism (Wilker and Sarat, 1998). Deterrence, or societal ways of inhibiting crime by fear of punishment, is based on the 18th century Enlightenment idea that as calculation and rational creatures, humans will not break the law if they think that the pains of punishment outweigh the pleasures of crime. This method of punishment serves two purposes: to deter the individual from committing the crime because they fear the punishment associated with the criminal act, and to deter future criminals because they see the effects of the criminal act when the perpetrator is punished (Macionis, 2006).

The argument over deterrence is nowhere as virulent as under the auspices of the subject of capital punishment- the death penalty. Proponents believe capital punishment serves to deter crime. Criminals "rationally maximize their own self-interest (utility) subject to constraints (prices, incomes) that they face in the marketplace and elsewhere" (Mulhausen, 2007).Opponents doubt any statistics about deterrence and find that capital punishment is morally and ethically wrong and not an appropriate part of a modern society.

In a recent study, however, the data shows that the effect of deterrence on capital crime is elastic at best, but in states that have a harsher sentencing history and belief in the death penalty, there is a statistical viability to the deterrence theory -- that the structure of the murder supply function depends entirely on the status of the death penalty (Liu, 237).

Using econometrics, a model was established that analyzes how offenders respond to changes in deterrence measures with and without the presence of the death penalty. Assumptions were made regarding the individual state-level view about the punishment -- it is far more utilitarian to support capital punishment in states that have rising crime rates and proportionally higher rates of murder. Further, because the racial aspect of the death penalty is so controversial, and for some the main focus of the debate, the study measured racial composition in the data as the percentage of nonwhites to the overall state population. Factors regarding levels of urbanization and religion were also factored into the results. Despite these rather rigorous variable sets being included, any sociologist will confirm that cultural factors like urbanization, religiosity, and even political leanings have undergone a massive shift since the 1940s and 1950s; in most cases liberalizing the population factors that approve of the death penalty.

Certainly, this study is both robust and detailed in the sorting and statistical applications run on the data. The authors are quite thorough in their estimation of individual variables on the data, and the use of appropriateness of certain "weighted factors" on the outcome. Of special significance was the way the study accounted for simultaneity. "The market model of crime suggests, however, that these measures are simultaneously determined along with the murder rate and public expenditures on enforcement. On the one hand, higher murder rates may lower the probability of apprehending and convicting offenders due to a crowding effect on the efficacy of law enforcement activity if enforcement budgets are constant. On the other hand, optimal law enforcement requires that enforcement budgets and willingness for the society to resort to harsher penalties increase in response to a higher risk of victimization" (Ibid).