DPI Series: Facts About the Death Penalty — Does the Death Penalty Make Communities Safer?

Deterrence is one of the most com­mon­ly expressed rea­sons for use of the death penal­ty, both as a con­sti­tu­tion­al jus­ti­fi­ca­tion¹ and as a pub­lic pol­i­cy ratio­nale. Elected offi­cials have recent­ly called the death penal­ty an ​“essen­tial” deter­rent to crime. The argu­ment goes that if some­one knows they could face the death penal­ty, they will not com­mit the crime. Following that rea­son­ing would sug­gest that states with the death penal­ty are safer than states without it. 

But does the evi­dence show that the death penal­ty deters crime and keeps communities safer? 

Answer: No. According to sev­er­al met­rics, states that impose the death penal­ty are not safer than states that do not use the death penal­ty. The data show that use is not cor­re­lat­ed with low­er mur­der rates; does not increase pro­tec­tions for law enforce­ment per­son­nel; and does not mean­ing­ful­ly advance public safety. 

Fact: Murder Rates Are Higher in Death Penalty States 

Although mur­der rates do not per­fect­ly rep­re­sent how ​“safe” a giv­en state is, they are often cit­ed as key indi­ca of safe­ty, and aggra­vat­ed mur­ders are the only crimes for which the pun­ish­ment may be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly applied. Statistics show that mur­der rates are high­er in states that have the death penal­ty. According to analy­sis by DPI based on FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in every year between 1990 to 2020, the mur­der rate in non-death penal­ty states was low­er than in death penal­ty states. A 2023 study by Stephen Oliphant found a sim­i­lar pat­tern in states whose gov­er­nors paused its use. In four states that paused exe­cu­tions, none expe­ri­enced an increase in mur­der rates attrib­ut­able to the pause. In three of those states, the same study actu­al­ly found a reduc­tion in mur­der rates fol­low­ing the mora­to­ria after con­trol­ling for other factors. 

Looking inter­na­tion­al­ly, in the European Union, where all coun­tries have abol­ished the death penal­ty, every coun­try has a low­er mur­der rate than the United States. More broad­ly, as of 2018, of the eleven coun­tries that had abol­ished the death penal­ty between 2008 and 2018, ten actu­al­ly expe­ri­enced a decline in mur­der rates post-abolition. 

Fact: The Death Penalty Does Not Increase Protections for Law Enforcement 

The intent of some state leg­is­la­tors is to specif­i­cal­ly deter law enforce­ment killings by includ­ing killing a law enforce­ment offi­cer as an ​“aggra­vat­ing fac­tor” — and there­by mak­ing a defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. However, there is no data that sup­ports the the­o­ry that the death penal­ty will increase pro­tec­tion for law enforce­ment. According to a 2017 analy­sis by DPI of thir­ty years of FBI data on mur­ders in the United States and mur­ders of law enforce­ment per­son­nel killed in the line of duty, the pres­ence or absence of the death penal­ty had no effect on either mur­der rates gen­er­al­ly or the rates at which law enforce­ment offi­cers were killed. In fact, police offi­cers are killed in the line of duty at a rate that is 1.37 times high­er in death penal­ty states than in non-death penal­ty states; eight of the nine safest states for law enforce­ment do not have the death penalty. 

Fact: The Death Penalty Does Not Advance Public Safety 

Some law enforce­ment offi­cials have argued that the death penal­ty has no deter­rent val­ue and does not increase pub­lic safe­ty. When inves­ti­gat­ing seri­ous crimes, they have found that use of the death penal­ty is too ran­dom for it to effec­tive­ly deter indi­vid­u­als. People with seri­ous men­tal impair­ments, trau­ma, or brain dam­age are also less like­ly to be deterred by the poten­tial con­se­quences of their actions. The cir­cum­stances that lead to a death sen­tence can vary great­ly; often cas­es with sim­i­lar fact pat­terns do not yield the same pun­ish­ment. Scholarship sup­ports this notion, find­ing that deter­rence is large­ly dri­ven by how cer­tain an indi­vid­ual is that they will be pun­ished, not the sever­i­ty of the pun­ish­ment. Studies that claim to show a deter­rent effect from the death penal­ty have been crit­i­cized by the National Research Council of the National Academies for omit­ting key vari­ables, improp­er sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, and missing data. 

Miriam Krinsky, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor and for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), argues that actu­al­ly elim­i­nat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would pro­mote pub­lic safe­ty by restor­ing a moral com­pass and com­mu­ni­ty trust with pros­e­cu­tors. She argues that indi­vid­u­als who are sub­ject­ed to the death penal­ty have dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly expe­ri­enced pover­ty, men­tal ill­ness, trau­ma, or intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and are often sub­ject­ed to racial dis­par­i­ties, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, or their attorney’s fail­ure to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent them in court, leav­ing them unjust­ly vul­ner­a­ble to extreme pun­ish­ment. This sense of injus­tice in turn under­mines com­mu­ni­ty trust in the crim­i­nal justice system.