Policy Issues
Deterrence
Studies show no link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates.
Policy Issues
Studies show no link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates.
Does Capital Punishment Deter Murder? Exploring murder rates, killings of police officers, and the death penalty
View DPIC's information about state-by-state murder rates. State and regional murder statistics show no correlation between use of the death penalty and reduced crime.
Deterrence is probably the most commonly expressed rationale for the death penalty. The essence of the theory is that the threat of being executed in the future will be sufficient to cause a significant number of people to refrain from committing a heinous crime they had otherwise planned. Deterrence is not principally concerned with the prevention of further killing by an already convicted death-penalty defendant. That falls under the topic of incapacitation.
Deterrence should not be considered in a vacuum. The critical question is not whether potential criminals will be dissuaded from killing because they would face the death penalty rather than no punishment at all. Other punishments such as life without parole might provide equal deterrence at far less costs and without the attendant risk of executing an innocent person. Whether the death penalty is a proven method of lowering the murder rate has been subjected to many studies over many decades.
It is not enough to compare jurisdictions with the death penalty to those without unless the study controls for the many other variables that could affect the murder rate. For example, lower unemployment rates correlate with lower crime rates. More police involvement in the local community seems to reduce crime. The death penalty affects only a tiny percentage of even those who commit murder. Its effect is very difficult to pinpoint, and the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that past studies have neither proven nor disproven a deterrent effect.
If the death penalty is not a proven deterrent to murder, is it worth the excessive costs, risks of error, uncertainty of completion, and other problems that are inherent to its practice? On the political level, the deterrent value of the death penalty is often taken for granted without a careful examination of the research or a consideration of less risky alternatives. This is especially relevant given that death penalty use has been declining dramatically. Most states are not carrying out any executions in a given year.
DPIC has collected many of the deterrent studies that have been conducted in the modern era and has summarized their results. It also provides some of the raw data on which such studies rely, such as the murder rate for each state in each year in the modern era, along with the number of executions and death sentences for each state in the same periods.
Jan 03, 2019
Nations that abolish the death penalty then tend to see their murder rates decline, according to a December 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a Washington, DC-based organization that promotes human rights and democracy in Iran. The …
Read MoreJan 07, 2021
Calling the death penalty “ineffective, racially based, hypocritical and inhumane,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell (pictured) has renewed his pledge to never authorize a capital prosecution. In a December 23, 20…
May 03, 2019
For the second time in as many years, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (pictured, left) has vetoed a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty. Sununu’s actio…
Jan 04, 2019
As he prepared for retirement, the long-time director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said he does not support the death penalty and believes the punishment is on its way out in Georgia and across the country. In a te…
Jun 29, 2018
Two men charged with killing Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Wilson III have been sentenced to life without possibility of parole, plus an additional term of 50 to 100 years, as prosecutors in
Mar 20, 2018
Saying “the ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty,” President Donald Trump (pictured) announced on March 19 that he will direct the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty against drug traffickers. The proposal, inc…
Jan 12, 2018
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 …
Jan 08, 2018
From October 2016 to October 2017, support for capital punishment among those identifying themselves as Republicans fell by ten percetage points
Dec 18, 2017
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 …
Dec 12, 2017
The certainty of apprehension, not the severity of punishment, is more effective as a deterrent. So argues Daniel S. Nagin (pictured), one of the nation’s foremost scholars on deterrence and criminal justice policy, in his chapter…
Nov 29, 2017
Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Scott Crichton (pictured) will not participate in deciding the appeal of a prisoner sentenced to death in a controversial, high-profile prison killing, after Crichton publicly comme…