Death Penalty Information Center Launches New Website

The Death Penalty Information Center has mod­ern­ized and expand­ed its award-win­ning web­site. On June 14, 2019, DPIC launched its redesigned web­site, cul­mi­nat­ing a two-year project that involved the trans­fer and reor­ga­ni­za­tion of infor­ma­tion on the Center’s more than 7,000 web­pages. Among the most notable addi­tions of the new web­site are 20 inter­ac­tive Tableau graph­ics, includ­ing States With and Without the Death Penalty, Prisoners on Death Row, and a num­ber of graph­ics on exe­cu­tions, exon­er­a­tions, and grants of clemen­cy. The graph­ics will allow users to fil­ter infor­ma­tion in a vari­ety of new ways, includ­ing nar­row­ing by year or range of years, geog­ra­phy, race, sex, and, for some graph­ics, race of vic­tim. The web­site launch is the first recon­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of the DPIC website.

The new DPIC web­site was designed by Richmond, Virginia-based soft­ware com­pa­ny Foster Made, which also designed a new DPIC data­base to track and ana­lyze infor­ma­tion on death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions in the United States. ​“We are thrilled and excit­ed — and of course a lit­tle ner­vous — about the new web­site,” said DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham. ​“We want­ed to pre­serve the bril­liant work cre­at­ed by [for­mer Executive Director] Dick Dieter over the course of the 23 years he ran DPIC, while mak­ing the web­site more user friend­ly and more visu­al­ly appeal­ing. We think Foster Made did a ter­rif­ic job and we encour­age users to check out the new site and exper­i­ment with the new interactive graphics.”

DPIC hopes that the new, sleek­er design of the web­site will help vis­i­tors find infor­ma­tion and resources more eas­i­ly. Visitors may encounter small chal­lenges in the ear­ly days of the new site, includ­ing unavoid­able issues with the site’s inter­nal search func­tion as Google grad­u­al­ly incor­po­rates the new site into its search results. To assist vis­i­tors in nav­i­gat­ing the new web­site, DPIC has pre­pared a guide to the site. The webguide high­lights the new loca­tions of DPIC’s most pop­u­lar pages, includ­ing Upcoming Executions and States With and Without the Death Penalty. It explains the nav­i­ga­tion menus, which divide many of our top­ics into ​“Policy Issues” and ​“Facts & Research.” Policy Issues includes major top­ics of debate relat­ed to the death penal­ty, includ­ing arbi­trari­ness, inno­cence, and costs. Facts & Research includes pages that are less the­o­ret­i­cal and more spe­cif­ic, includ­ing sen­tenc­ing data, mur­der rates, and recent leg­is­la­tion. The nav­i­ga­tion menu also makes it eas­i­er to find infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tions, death row, and state-by-state data. The guide also con­tains a brief intro­duc­tion to the inter­ac­tive graph­ics and a glos­sary of essen­tial terms used through­out the website.

The launch of the redesigned web­site is only the begin­ning of DPIC’s efforts to improve the qual­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty of its resources. The data­base that cur­rent­ly pro­vides infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tions and exon­er­a­tions will be expand­ed in the com­ing months to include infor­ma­tion on death sen­tences imposed across the United States. As DPIC com­pletes its death-row cen­sus of the sta­tus of every death sen­tence imposed in the coun­try since 1973, new inter­ac­tive tables and graph­ics will allow vis­i­tors to exam­ine death-sen­tenc­ing pat­terns and trends at the nation­al, state, and coun­ty lev­els. ​“The new web­site and data­base have enor­mous poten­tial that we are just begin­ning to unleash,” Dunham said. ​“Its great­est asset may well be empow­er­ing the imag­i­na­tions of jour­nal­ists, advo­cates, and the gen­er­al pub­lic to look at the death-penal­ty data in new and enlight­en­ing ways to ensure that opin­ions are formed and pub­lic pol­i­cy deci­sions are made on this impor­tant issue based on facts rather than on myths.”