Facts & Research

Murder Rates

State and regional murder statistics show no correlation between use of the death penalty and reduced crime.

Overview

The foundation for the death penalty in the U.S. rests on whether it is necessary as a response to murder. About 40 percent of the states have ended the use of capital punishment. Of the remaining states that retain it, only a few use it on a regular basis. The murder rates of states with and without the death penalty are relevant to whether it is justified. The murder rate for the country as a whole over various time periods is also a barometer of whether or not the public will be in favor of harsher punishments for crime. Murder rates, which are the result of dividing the number of murders by the population of a jurisdiction, can be more useful in comparing states and countries than the absolute number of murders committed.

At Issue

In trying to measure whether the use of the death penalty has an effect on the level of violent crime, researchers often use murder rates and compare them with the practice of the death penalty, either through the number of executions or death sentences. This is problematic on a national basis because the death penalty is not available in many states, and where it is carried out, the executions amount to only a tiny percentage of the murders committed. Even when comparing states, it is difficult to single out whether the relatively rare use of the death penalty is causing a change in crime or whether the change is attributable to other causes such as the rate of employment, the quality of education, or many other local variables.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC has collected statistics published by the FBI on the murder rates in each state for each year, each geographical region, and for the country as a whole. DPIC deepens the analysis by noting whether each state had the death penalty for the time period in question. Murder rates can easily be compared with other available data, such as the number of executions, death sentences, and the size of death row.


Data Sources:


News & Developments


News

Jun 09, 2023

New AH Datalytics Data Shows Sharp Decline in Murder Rates in 2023

New data from AH Datalytics shows sharp and broad decline” in mur­der rates for 2023. In a recent arti­cle pub­lished in The Atlantic, Jeff Asher (pic­tured), a crime ana­lyst based in New Orleans and co-founder of AH Datalytics, writes that the decline in mur­der rates across the United States is one of the largest annu­al per­cent changes in mur­der ever recorded.” 

Read More

News

Oct 22, 2018

Gallup Poll — Fewer than Half of Americans, a New Low, Believe Death Penalty is Applied Fairly

Fewer than half of Americans now believe the death penal­ty is fair­ly applied in the United States, accord­ing to the 2018 annu­al Gallup crime poll of U.S. adults, con­duct­ed October 1 – 10. The 49% of Americans who said they believed the death penal­ty was applied fair­ly” was the low­est Gallup has ever record­ed since it first includ­ed the ques­tion in its crime poll in 2000. The per­cent­age of U.S. adults who said they believe the death penal­ty is unfair­ly applied rose to 45%, the high­est since Gallup began ask­ing the question,…

Read More

News

Sep 25, 2018

FBI Crime Report Shows Murder Rates Stable in 2017

The FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017, released by the U.S. Department of Justice, reports that mur­der rates sta­bi­lized across the United States in 2017, decreas­ing mar­gin­al­ly com­pared to adjust­ed homi­cide fig­ures from 2016 but remain­ing above the record lows record­ed ear­li­er in the decade. The ini­tial FBI crime fig­ures for 2017 report 17,284 mur­ders across the United States in 2017, com­pared to 17,413 in 2016, drop­ping the nation­wide mur­der rate from 5.4 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple to 5.3. The homi­cide num­bers are vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the ini­tial FBI homicide…

Read More

News

Feb 28, 2018

OUTLIER COUNTIES: Death Sentences, Executions More Likely in Hamilton County Than Elsewhere in Ohio

With 24 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly con­demned to die, Hamilton County—home to Cincinnati—has the largest death row of any coun­ty in Ohio, despite a small­er pop­u­la­tion and a low­er mur­der rate than oth­er parts of the state. Ten of the 55 pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in the state since the 1970s were sen­tenced to death in Hamilton County, again more than any oth­er Ohio county.

Read More

News

Jan 12, 2018

Experience Shows No Parade of Horribles” Following Abolition of the Death Penalty

States that have recent­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty have not expe­ri­enced the parade of hor­ri­bles” — includ­ing increased mur­der rates — pre­dict­ed by death-penal­ty pro­po­nents, accord­ing to death-penal­ty experts who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the 2017 American Bar Association nation­al meet­ing in New York City. Instead, the pan­elists said, abo­li­tion appears to have cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to move for­ward with oth­er broad­er crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms.

Read More

News

Dec 18, 2017

New Jersey Marks Tenth Anniversary of Abolition of Capital Punishment

On December 17, 2007, New Jersey abol­ished the death penal­ty. On the tenth anniver­sary of abo­li­tion, the edi­to­r­i­al board of the New Jersey Law Journal writes, On the Death Penalty, New Jersey Got it Right.” The edi­to­r­i­al board wrote, Abolition has proven its worth, in that there has been no surge of mur­ders, a sig­nif­i­cant decline of pros­e­cu­tion and appeal expens­es, and the elim­i­na­tion of unre­me­di­a­ble judi­cial mis­takes. [Abolition] was and remains both the right thing and the sen­si­ble thing to have done.” In August 1982, New Jersey reen­act­ed the…

Read More

News

Oct 03, 2017

BOOKS: End of Its Rope — How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice

The death penal­ty in the United States is at the end of its rope [and] its abo­li­tion will be a cat­a­lyst for reform­ing our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” So argues University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon L. Garrett in his wide­ly antic­i­pat­ed new book, End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice, which ana­lyzes the rea­sons behind the steep decline in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in over the last 25 years. With the help of oth­er researchers at the University of Virginia, Garrett ana­lyzed death-sen­tenc­ing data from 1990

Read More

News

Sep 12, 2017

NEW PODCAST: DPIC Study Finds No Evidence that Death Penalty Deters Murder or Protects Police

A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of U.S. mur­der data from 1987 through 2015 has found no evi­dence that the death penal­ty deters mur­der or pro­tects police. Instead, the evi­dence shows that mur­der rates, includ­ing mur­ders of police offi­cers, are con­sis­tent­ly high­er in death-penal­ty states than in states that have abol­ished the death penal­ty. And far from expe­ri­enc­ing increas­es in mur­der rates or open sea­son on law enforce­ment, the data show that states that have abol­ished the death penal­ty since 2000 have the low­est rates of police offi­cers mur­dered in…

Read More