DPIC Reports
Below are reports released by the Death Penalty Information Center since its inception, covering subjects such as race, innocence, politicization, costs of the death penalty, and more. When opening a report, please allow the report page to load fully before selecting links to sections or footnotes. Most of these reports are also available in printed form from DPIC. For a copy of one of these reports, e‑mail DPIC. For bulk orders, please download our Resource Order Form.
Reports are separated into Year End Reports, In-Depth Reports, and Special Reports. In-Depth Reports are DPIC’s signature long, thorough reports on major death-penalty issues. These include “The 2% Death Penalty,” examining geographic arbitrariness in capital punishment, and “Behind the Curtain,” covering secrecy in the death penalty system. Special Reports are shorter, and typically address a specific event or question. These include DPIC’s explanation of the 2017 spate of executions that were scheduled in Arkansas, and our analysis of the largest number of executions performed on a single day.
Reports: 61 — 65
Feb 01, 1995
On the Front Line: Law Enforcement Views on the Death Penalty
A new national survey of police chiefs from around the country discredits the repeated assertion that the death penalty is an important law enforcement tool. While politicians have extolled the importance of capital punishment in fighting crime, they have failed to assess the actual priorities of those in law enforcement and have saddled the taxpayers with an enormously costly death penalty at the expense of more effective crime fighting strategies.
Read MoreNov 01, 1994
Millions Misspent: What Politicians Don’t Say About the High Costs of the Death Penalty
Across the country, police are being laid off, prisoners are being released early, the courts are clogged, and crime continues to rise. The economic recession has caused cutbacks in the backbone of the criminal justice system. In Florida, the budget crisis resulted in the early release of 3,000 prisoners. In Texas, prisoners are serving only 20% of their time and rearrests are common. Georgia is laying off 900 correctional personnel and New Jersey has had to dismiss 500 police officers. Yet these same states, and many others like them, are…
Read MoreMay 01, 1994
The Future of the Death Penalty in the U.S.: A Texas-Sized Crisis
Texas is the nation’s foremost executioner. It has been responsible for a third of the executions in the country and has carried out two and a half times as many death sentences as the next leading state. Death warrants are being signed at an unmanageable pace, yet the Texas death row is bulging with unprecedented numbers of inmates. But this accelerated form of justice comes at a price. The rest of the country should heed the warning of the Texas experience before it embarks on a wholesale expansion of the…
Read MoreMar 01, 1994
Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988 – 1994
Racial minorities are being prosecuted under federal death penalty law far beyond their proportion in the general population or the population of criminal offenders. Analysis of prosecutions under the federal death penalty provisions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 [2] reveals that 89% of the defendants selected for capital prosecution have been either African-American or Mexican-American. Moreover, the number of prosecutions under this Act has been increasing over the past two years with no decline in the racial disparities. All ten of the recently approved federal capital prosecutions have…
Read MoreDec 31, 1993
Innocence and the Death Penalty: Assessing the Danger of Mistaken Executions
In 1972, when the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty as then applied was arbitrary and capricious and therefore unconstitutional, a majority of the Justices expected that the adoption of narrowly crafted sentencing procedures would protect against innocent persons being sentenced to death. Yet the promise of Furman has not been fulfilled: innocent persons are still being sentenced to death, and the chances are high that innocent persons have been or will be executed.
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