In February 2015, the Brennan Center for Justice released a report examining potential explanations for the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. The death penalty was one of the possible contributing causes the researchers evaluated. The report’s conclusion: the death penalty had no effect on the decline in crime. The authors explained: “Empirically, capital punishment is too infrequent to have a measureable effect on the crime drop. Criminologically, the existence and use of the death penalty may not even create the deterrent effect on potential offenders that lawmakers hoped when enacting such laws.” The authors noted criminals do not consider the consequences of their actions, particularly when the consequence is rarely applied, as in the case of the death penalty. “Much psychological and sociological research suggests that many criminal acts are crimes of passion or committed in a heated moment based only on immediate circumstances, and thus potential offenders may not consider or weigh longer-term possibilities of punishment and capture, including the possibility of capital punishment.” They concluded, “In line with the past research, the Brennan Center’s empirical analysis finds that there is no evidence that executions had an effect on crime in the 1990s or 2000s.” Ultimately, the report attributed the drop in crime to various social changes and policing tactics, with increased incarceration having no effect in the 2000s and only minimal effect on property crime in the 1990s.
Read the report, O. Roeder, L. Eisen, and J. Bowling, What Caused the Crime Decline?, Brennan Center for Justice (Feb. 12, 2015), here.
