Many claim the death penalty is not a deterrent, however this view is totally wrong. A study in 1985 by economist Stephan K. Layson claimed 18 lives where saved by each execution. The study also argued if you raise death penalty sentencing by 1%, you save 105 lives. In 1972-1976 a temporary suspension of capital punishment occured. Texas A & M researcher Karl Spence notes:
While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction.[1]Wesley Lowe makes a cool little graph:
Here is a short list of studies claiming deterrence (list is larger now--look up the CJLF tally, but this highlights some of the older studies).
(2003) Emory University Study finds each execution saves 18 lives, margin of error is ten (so it could be 28 or 8).
(2003) Naci Moacan finds each execution saves 5-6 lives, and every time someone is let out of death row 1 life is lost (so more execution more lives saved)
(2001) Study in Texas found the state wide moratorium caused 150 deaths to homocide
(2001) Professor Liu says aboloshing the DP raises crime by ending one deterrent effect (the DP) and makes it seem the state is easy on crime and lowers the deterrent effect of prison, too.
(2003) Each execution leads to 5 less murders
(2003) Each execution deters 3-25 murders
(2003) Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd argued: "The results are boldly clear: executions deter murders and murder rates increase substantially during moratoriums. The results are consistent across before-and-after comparisons and regressions regardless of the data's aggregation level, the time period, or the specific variable to measure executions."[2]
The debate has changed dramatically since then. In 2006 Donahue and Wolfers have claimed to have destroyed the deterrent hypothesis, but their analysis was refuted by Zimmerman 2009, Cloninger & Marchesini 2009, Dezhbakhsh & Rubin 2010, and a new study by Frakes & Harding 2009 says the death penalty reduces child murder 20%.[3] Most studies criticize the deterrence work with the same objections all answered by these rebuttal papers to Donahue and Wolfers 2006. The main criticism is the results are not robust and, therefore, are susceptible to bias. What is funny is in many of these studies the authors even admit they are against the death penalty (Shepard in one of the PDF's I read said he opposed it). And Nanci Moacan who defended his analysis early on noted:
"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it. . . . The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect. . . . The results are robust, they don't really go away. I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters). What am I going to do, hide them?"[4]John Lott, an economist, noted in his Fox News column that 9 out of twelve economic studies on the issue of deterrence found a deterrent effect (not counting his 2007 study in his book Freedomnomics published after this article and which I will soon have the pleasure to read) and he essentially gets the same statistics as the studies mentioned. Lott notes:
Generally, the studies over the last decade that examined how the murder rates in each state changed as they changed their execution rate found that each execution saved the lives of roughly 15 to 18 potential murder victims. Overall, the rise in executions during the 1990s accounts for about 12 to 14 percent of the overall drop in murders.[5]A 1999 study from Isaac Ehrlich and Liu which was the oldest study after 1996 I could find in the internet (via jstor). Ehrlich uses a corrected version of his statistical analysis which many viewed unfit in his original study in the seventies; he argued it corrects the problems cited by anti capital punishment academics. The study shows that deterrence theory is not “doubtful” and has significant evidence behind the assertion. His study, however, he conceded does not “prove” deterrence, more work is needed, however he also argues he offers significant evidence for that conclusion. He concludes that, on balance, stricter punishments (like the DP) on balance decrease crime.[6]
(the quotes look different different because I copied and pasted this from an online debate I had)
The final study I will look at in depth is the 2004 study by Shepard (he has done a lot of work in the field). His study is the most commonly heard statistic in the issue. He has three main findings. 1) On average, each execution saves 3 lives, 2) the study shows it benefits African Americans the most, saving 1.5 African America lives, one person of white decent, and .5 of other people. (If you understand statistics the decimals showing up make sense), and 3) shortening time on death row decreases murder. Reducing time on death row by 2.75 years saves one additional life.[7]
Murray Rothbard noted in 1978:
Another common liberal complaint is that the death penalty does not deter murder from being committed. All sorts of statistics are slung back and forth trying to "prove" or disprove this claim. While it is impossible to prove the degree of deterrence, it seems indisputable that some murders would be deterred by the death penalty. Sometimes the liberal argument comes perilously close to maintaining that no punishment deters any crime — a manifestly absurd view that could easily be tested by removing all legal penalties for nonpayment of income tax and seeing if there is any reduction in the taxes paid. (Wanna bet?) Furthermore, the murderer himself is certainly "deterred" from any repetition of his crime — and quite permanently.[8]Dudley Sharp (JFA) noted in 1997:
Current numbers since 1973 show 28,000 recidivist murders have occurred, so if the death penalty was applied in all of these cases 28,000 lives would have been saved (not including deterrence).[10]6% of young adults paroled in 1978 after having been convicted of murder were arrested for murder again within 6 years of release. ... Of the roughly 52,000 state prison inmates serving time for murder in 1984, an estimated 810 had previously been convicted of murder and had killed 821 persons following their previous murder convictions. Executing each of these inmates would have saved 821 lives." (41, 1 Stanford Law Review, 11/88, pg. 153) Using a 75% murder clearance rate, it is most probable that the actual number of lives saved would have been 1026, or fifty times the number legally executed that year. This suggests that some 10,000 persons have been murdered, since 1971, by those who had previously committed additional murders (JFA).[9]
Summary:
(1) The death penalty saves MANY lives per execution, 1,254 - 35,112 lives saved since 1973.
(2) The death penalty prevents recidivism and if execution was always used for murder 821 lives would be saved each year (1988 study) or 28,000 lives saved total (BJS data from 2007)
Either way, the DP saves lives.
1. http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html#deter
2. Studies from: http://www.wesleylowe.com/deter.html
3. http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/dpdeterrence.htm
4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061100406.html
5. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,284336,00.html
6. Isaac Ehrlich and Zhiqiang Liu. “Sensitivity Analyses of the Deterrence Hypothesis: Let's Keep the Econ in Econometrics”, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 42, No. S1, (April 1996), 455-488.
7. Joanna M. Shepherd, “Murders of Passion, Execution Delays, and the Deterrence of Capital Punishment,” Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 33 (June 2004), 283-321.
8. http://mises.org/daily/4468
9. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/dp.html#B.Deterrence
10. http://homicidesurvivors.com/2012/04/06/innocents-more-at-risk-without-death-penalty.aspx
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