Study: 88% of criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent

A recent study by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation’s lead­ing crim­i­nol­o­gists do not believe the death penal­ty is an effec­tive deter­rent to crime. The study, Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists, pub­lished in the Journal of Criminal Law and Crimonology, con­clud­ed, ​“There is over­whelm­ing con­sen­sus among America’s top crim­i­nol­o­gists that the empir­i­cal research con­duct­ed on the deter­rence ques­tion fails to sup­port the threat or use of the death penal­ty.” A pre­vi­ous study in 1996 had come to similar conclusions.

The crim­i­nol­o­gists sur­veyed includ­ed — 1) Fellows in the American Society of Criminology (ASC), (2) Winners of the ASC’s Sutherland Award, the high­est award giv­en by that orga­ni­za­tion for con­tri­bu­tions to crim­i­no­log­i­cal the­o­ry, or (3) Presidents of the ASC between 1997 and the present. Those pres­i­dents before 1997 had been includ­ed in the pri­or sur­vey. Respondents were asked to base their answers on exist­ing empir­i­cal research, not their views on capital punishment.

Nearly 78% of those sur­veyed said that hav­ing the death penal­ty in a state does not low­er the mur­der rate. In addi­tion, 91% of respon­dents said politi­cians sup­port the death penal­ty in order to appear tough on crime – and 75% said that it dis­tracts leg­is­la­tures on the state and nation­al lev­el from focus­ing on real solu­tions to crime prob­lems. Over all, 94% agreed that there was lit­tle emper­i­cal evi­dence to sup­port the deter­rent effect of the death penal­ty. And 90% said the death penal­ty had lit­tle effect over­all on the com­mit­ting of mur­der. Additionally, 91.6% said that increas­ing the fre­quen­cy of exe­cu­tions would not add a deter­rent effect, and 87.6% said that speed­ing up exe­cu­tions would­n’t work either.

Public opin­ion also reflects these find­ings. In a 2006 Gallup Poll, only 34% of respon­dents agreed that ​“the death penal­ty acts as a deter­rent to the com­mit­ment of mur­der, that it low­ers the mur­der rate.” In 2004, 62% of peo­ple said the death penal­ty was not a deter­rent. By con­trast, in 1985, 62% believed the death penal­ty act­ed as a deter­rent to murder.

(Source: M. Radelet & T. Lacock, ​“Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists,” 99 Journal of Criminal Law & Crimonology 489, Northwestern University (2009)).

See DPIC’s Deterrence page.