A new study has been released that explores the cor­re­la­tions between coun­tries’ legal, polit­i­cal, and reli­gious sys­tems and their use of the death penal­ty. Professors David Greenberg from New York University and Valerie West of John Jay College exam­ined data from 193 nations to test why some coun­tries reg­u­lar­ly use cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment while oth­ers have aban­doned it alto­geth­er. They found, ​“In part, a country’s death penal­ty sta­tus is linked to its gen­er­al puni­tive­ness towards crim­i­nals. Countries that imprison more con­vict­ed crim­i­nals are also more like­ly to kill them.” Interestingly, the data showed that ​“a country’s pop­u­la­tion has no sig­nif­i­cant direct or indi­rect effect on its death penal­ty sta­tus. Nor does its homi­cide rate. Countries with few­er polit­i­cal rights are more like­ly to have the death penal­ty.” The link between polit­i­cal rights and abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty was illus­trat­ed by the fact that coun­tries with high­er lit­er­a­cy rates and devel­oped economies were least like­ly to have the death penal­ty. Catholicism also showed a strong influ­ence over the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the study, show­ing a reduc­tion of the death penal­ty where there was a large pres­ence of Catholics. Greenberg and West point out, ​“There are excep­tions to these gen­er­al­iza­tions. Retentionist soci­eties are not all cut from the same cloth, nor are all abolitionist societies.”

(D. Greenberg, V. West, ​“Siting the Death Penalty Internationally,” 33 Law & Social Inquiry 295 (Spring 2008). See International and Studies.

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