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.