Does Capital Punishment Actually Reduce Crime?

 

Cruelty or Justice:

A Critical Analysis of the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment 


Figure 1: A female figure of Justice with a blindfold holding a balance and an injection. Behind Lady Justice is a shadow with the label "Death Penalty". 

    While capital punishment was abolished in Canada in 1998, our neighbours south of the border still routinely employ this method of punishment (Gendreau & Renke, 2020). Out of the 50 American states, 23 states do not have the death penalty, 24 states have the penalty, and the remaining three states have put a hold on executions for the foreseeable future (Dieter, 2013, p. 4). The primary method of execution in the U.S. is the lethal injection, although states still authorize other methods including electrocution, hanging, gas chamber, and firing squad (Sarat et al., 2012, pp. 7–9). The death penalty can only be imposed on defendants convicted of capital offences such as murder, treason, or genocide (p. 7–8). As a fellow Canadian, the death penalty is a topic worth investigating because Canada’s rates of violent crime are significantly lower when compared to America (Gannon, 2001, p. 1). Our lower crime rate could suggest that the government’s approach to criminality plays a role in affecting their citizen’s attitudes towards a life of crime. This paper will explore the effectiveness of routinely employed capital punishment by observing its effect on crime deterrence. Through a combination of literature review and secondary data, this paper will compare the positive and negative consequences of the death penalty which will suggest areas of improvement to current public policies.

Historical Background 

    “Psychologists and criminologists have been studying the death penalty for decades and reaching conclusions that do not always overlap” (Dezhbakhsh & Shepherd, 2007, p. 512). Robert Dann’s (1935) study reveals that “an average of 4.4 more homicides occurred during the 60 days following an execution” which suggests that instead of reducing crime, the executions led to an increase in violent crimes (as cited in Hoffman et al., 2017, p. 89). In 1959, criminologist Thorsten Sellin concluded that the death penalty has no measurable deterrent effect beyond that of life imprisonment (p. 90). Economists soon joined the debate in 1975 with Isaac Ehrlich’s work where he concludes that “each execution in the United States would save seven or eight people from being murdered” (p. 90). While Ehrlich’s research has been “widely cited by advocates of the death penalty as empirical proof of the deterrent effect of capital punishment, subsequent research that attempted to replicate Ehrlich’s analysis using the original data showed that his approach was flawed” (p. 90). Overall, historical research results range from a substantial deterrent effect to no effect or a small adverse effect. Thus, it is necessary to consider contemporary statistics and literature when analyzing the modern effects of capital punishment.

Literature Review

In 2007, Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd researched crime rates in American states that had a moratorium on executions. Their research is unique as it compares the before-and after-moratorium crime rates, that is, there is an emphasis on observing states that are undergoing policy changes while state officials conduct a thorough examination of the state’s death penalty system. By drawing on substantial pre- and post-moratorium evidence between 1972 and 1976, their research reports that “executions deter murders, and murder rates increase substantially during moratoriums” (p. 532). By showing a correlation between moratoriums and murders, the authors reinforce that executions provide a large benefit to society by deterring murders.

Two years before Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd’s research, Shepherd conducted an individual research study which showed that “the states where capital punishment deters murder also have a higher rate of executions, compared to the states where capital punishment does not deter murder” (p. 247). Shepherd states that “if a state executes many people, then criminals are convinced that the state is serious about the punishment, and the criminals start to reduce their criminal activity” (p. 247). Her assumption rests on the necessity of uniformity of law, that is, “no one is exempt from the law because of irrelevant characteristics, such as social status, wealth, or political connections” (Sutherland et al., 1992, p. 324). However, the deterrent effect is only seen in a few states, “as in most states, capital punishment either increases murder or has no effect” (p. 248). Shepherd’s research found a threshold number of nine executions; that is, if a state conducted more than nine executions, then each execution deterred murder (p. 248–249). Although if a state conducted fewer executions than the threshold, the executions increased the murder rates. Therefore, in a “large majority of states, executions do not deter murder” (p. 248).

A few years later, Scott Phillips (2009) showed a correlation between the so-called arbitrary nature of capital punishment and the victim’s social status. His concluding remarks state:

If an indigent Black defendant killed a high-status victim—one who was integrated, sophisticated, conventional, and respectable—the predicted probability of a death sentence was 0.42. But if a white defendant who could hire legal counsel killed a low-status victim—one who was marginal, unsophisticated, unconventional, and disrespectable—the predicted probability of a death sentence plummeted to 0.02. (p. 831). 

Thus, capital punishment is not enforced simply based on the legal facts of a case, but rather based on the victim’s place in the world. His paper suggests that “high-status victims matter more than low-status victims,” and while this may be true of all forms of sentencing, it raises ethical questions about the value of a life in a capitalistic world. Phillips’s research provides “strong evidence that the death penalty is administered arbitrarily” (p. 831). 

The three articles discussed above shed light on the importance of the consistency of capital punishment to be considered an effective deterrent. The following sociological perspectives will situate this narrative in a manner that can help inform public policy. 

Competing Sociological Perspectives

    Based on current statistics from the U.S. capital punishment does not have a deterrent effect on crime. In addition to this finding, it is just as important to consider the ethical ramifications of enforcing capital punishment. By framing capital punishment through realist and relativist traditions, this paper will show how capital punishment has more affinity with relativist tradition.

    Emile Durkheim, a famous functionalist, advocated for punishing the criminal as he believed that the purpose of punishment is to control crime and to support the collective sentiments of society. His collectivistic approach “did not believe capital punishment was necessary for deterrence as much as he thought of it as essential for re-establishing the community’s morality and a sense of safety” (R. Phillips, 2013, p. 4).

    On the other hand, since the topic of capital punishment is a matter of life and death, it is difficult to reach a conclusion as the death penalty can be both moral and immoral. In addition, based on Scott Phillips’s research we see that crimes are not consistently punished by the death penalty and people can escape the punishment altogether. For example, offenders can escape capital punishment in certain states as the death penalty is justified in some places while being immoral in others.

Analysis

This section will discuss the positive and negative effects of capital punishment by using secondary data.

Positive Effects of Capital Punishment

    One of the biggest advantages of enforcing the death penalty is that the victim’s family finds peace in the guarantee that the accused cannot commit more crimes. By eliminating the criminal, the punishment eliminates the threat of crime recurrence, thus providing the victims’ families with closure. By supporting that the “punishment increases the total amount of happiness in the world”, the benefits of the death penalty outweigh the consequences and can therefore be asserted that the death penalty is ethical from a utilitarian perspective (Hoffman et al., 2017, p. 4).

    In addition, as seen through Shepherd’s research (2005), “capital punishment deters murder in Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas” (p. 247). Thus, capital punishment can reduce murder rates. Although Shepherd concludes her paper with a final word of caution that her research does not offer “definitive conclusions about the degree to which capital punishment deters or induces murders in a specific state” (p. 248).

Negative Effects of Capital Punishment

On the other hand, out of the 50 states, capital punishment only deters murder in six states, which means that in the remaining 44 states, the death penalty can either increase or have no effect on the murder rate (Shepherd, 2005, p. 248). 

Death penalties are also associated with surprisingly elevated levels of cost as they involve many steps such as pre-trials, jury selections, appeals, and incarceration. A recent study conducted in Maryland found that each death sentence costs approximately $3 million (Roman et al., 2008). In contrast, it costs $17,340 to house an inmate for a year, and $693,500 for 40 years, far less than the death penalty costs (Dieter, 2013, p. 18). Based on the approximate figures gathered by different states, we can conclude that capital punishment costs more than sentencing a prisoner to life without parole. This expense drains money that could be used for education and social programs that address the crime problem at a more fundamental level.

In addition, there is always the chance of wrongful execution. "Confirmation bias is perhaps the best known and most widely accepted notion of inferential error to come out of the literature on human reasoning" (Evans, 1989, p. 41). In other words, once humans believe in something, we tend to cherry-pick information that confirms our existing ideas. Loeffler et al. (2018) estimate that “about 6% of all felony convictions leading to imprisonment in the U.S. are incorrect” (p. 281). Lastly, Radelet et al. (1992) estimated that at least 23 individuals had been wrongfully executed in the U.S. from 1990 to 1991.

Furthermore, it is "estimated that 3% of U.S. executions in the period from 1890 to 2010 were botched” (Sarat et al., 2012, p. 9). Botched executions occur when there is a “departure from the protocol for a particular method of execution, which results in delays or unnecessary agony for the prisoner” (p. 8). Some examples include inmates catching fire while being electrocuted, being strangled during hangings (instead of having their necks broken), and being administered the wrong dosages of specific drugs for lethal injections (pp. 8–9). In fact, lethal injection had the highest rate of botched executions due to reasons such as being to find a usable vein, reinserting the injection, allergic reaction, and incorrect direction of injection (p. 21). According to Sarat et al., promises about safe, reliable, effective, and humane execution technology have not been generally fulfilled (p. 15).

Finally, it is important to recognize the fact that executions may increase the likelihood of murders being committed and this is referred to as the brutalization effect. The basis of this theory is that potential criminals may begin to model their behaviour after state authorities: If the government can kill its enemies, so can they” (Hoffman et al., 2017, p. 89). The brutalization effect means that after an execution murder may increase, causing even more deaths of innocent victims.

Figure 2: Demonstrators outside the Don Jail in Toronto protest the execution by hanging of two convicted murderers on December 11th, 1962.

Controversies Related to Data Collection Methods

    Ever since Ehrlich published his research with the conclusion that “each execution in the United States would save seven or eight people from being murdered,” scholars from several disciplines have tried to develop their hypothesis about the deterrent effect of executions (Hoffman et al., 2017, p. 90). Since each discipline has its methods, perspectives, assumptions, and beliefs about human behaviours, it is not surprising that similar and even identical data sets can lead to different and contrary conclusions. Thus, Yang and Lester (2007) apply a meta-analysis to the studies, a statistical technique that combines information from all of the studies to summarize the results using a numerical score.

    They found that the presence of a deterrent effect in this meta-analysis depended upon the type of study (Yang & Lester, 2007, p. 248). The “statistically significant deterrent effect was found most clearly for the time-series and panel studies” (p. 248). In contrast, “the cross-sectional and media studies gave mixed results, and deterrent or brutalization effects failed to reach statistical significance” (p. 248). While Yang and Lester are unable to draw well-grounded reasons for the difference in the deterrent effect, the implications of their research show that many factors such as race, sex, and social class influence the deterrent effect. Hence, the method used to analyze the same data can produce different results which enforces the convoluted nature of this topic and thus encourages policymakers to be critical of research that tries to reach absolute and simplistic results (Yang & Lester, 2007).

Potential Public Policy Implications

    Overall, this paper shows that even though executions can be beneficial to society by deterring murders, they also have costs. These include the discriminatory application of the death penalty, the chance of wrongful execution, the ethical ramifications of botched executions, the possibility of the brutalization effect, and higher taxes. Policymakers must weigh the benefits and costs to find the best use of the death penalty. Alternative strategies to reduce the murder rate may be more effective and more ethically acceptable, “depending on one's theory of the etiology of murder such as stricter gun control, elimination of poverty, and legalization of drugs” (Yang & Lester, 2007, p. 459). In addition, if the considerable sum of money distributed for capital punishment was redirected to improving educational and social welfare systems, then the rate of all crime would decrease exponentially. There is empirical proof that this system works as it is already employed in Norway and their recidivism rate is one of the lowest in the world.

    This paper shows that when routinely employed, capital punishment, on average, does not deter crime, thus it is important to not only abolish the death penalty but also improve the state of our public programs to improve the quality of life of citizens.

Conclusion

    This paper explored the positive and negative consequences related to the death penalty, and the negatives outweighed the positives. It is important to ask whether the government is justified in using murder to punish those who commit murder. Do two wrongs make a right? As T.M. Scanlon put it, “working out the terms of moral justification is an unending task” (p. 361), and similar to this quote, working out the moral justification for capital punishment will always remain a convoluted and unending task.





Works Cited 
  1. Dezhbakhsh, H., & Shepherd, J. M. (2006). The deterrent effect of capital punishment: Evidence from a “judicial experiment.” Economic Inquiry, 44(3), 512–535. https://doi.org/10.1093/ei/cbj032
  2. Dieter, R. C. (2013). The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All. Death Penalty Information Center, 1–35.
  3. Evans, J. St. B. T. (1989). Bias in human reasoning: Causes and consequences. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  4. Gannon, M. (2001). Feasibility Study on Crime Comparisons Between Canada and the United States. Statistics Canada, 2–27. 
  5. Gendreau, P., & Renke, W. (2020). Capital Punishment in Canada. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/capital-punishment
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  7. Loeffler, C. E., Hyatt, J., & Ridgeway, G. (2019). Measuring Self-Reported Wrongful Convictions Among Prisoners. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 35, 259–286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-018-9381-1
  8. Phillips, R. (2013). Executions and Public Support for Capital Punishment in the United States: A Durkheimian Perspective. International Journal of Criminology and Sociological Theory, 6(3), 57–60.
  9. Phillips, S. (2009). Status disparities in the capital of capital punishment. Law & Society Review, 43(4), 807–838. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2009.00389.x
  10. Radelet, M. L., Bedau, H. A., & Putnam, C. E. (1992). In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases. Northeastern University Press.
  11. Roman, J., Chalfin, A., Sundquist, A., Knight, C., & Darmenov, A. (2008). The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland. Urban Institute.
  12. Sarat, A., Jones, A., Sprung-Keyser, M., Blumstein, K., & Weaver, H. (2012). Gruesome Spectacles: The Cultural Reception of Botched Executions in America, 1890 - 1920. British Journal of American Legal Studies, 1(1), 1–35.
  13. Scanlon, T. (2000). What We Owe to Each Other. Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press.
  14. Shepherd, J. M. (2005). Deterrence versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment’s Differing Impacts among States. Michigan Law Review, 104(2), 203–256. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30044629
  15. Sutherland, Cressey, D. R., & Luckenbill, D. F. (1992). Principles of Criminology (11th ed.). AltaMira Press.
  16. Yang, B., & Lester, D. (2008). The deterrent effect of executions: A meta-analysis thirty years after Ehrlich. Journal of Criminal Justice, 36(5), 453–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2008.07.008