DEATH PENALTY

Death Penalty

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Death Penalty

Introduction

Death is the ultimate penal sanction, which has made it controversial worldwide (Baldus, Woodworth, and Pulaski Jr., 1990). Consequently, social scientists have long gravitated to it as a subject for policy-relevant, empirical research. In most nations, however, moral concerns have since World War II led to the death penalty's abolition as cruel and inhuman, which has mooted empirical research. As late as 1998, there were 1,625 official executions in 37 countries, 83 percent of which occurred in the People's Republic of China (1,067), the Democratic Republic of Congo (100), the United States (68), Iran (66), and Egypt (48).

By 2003, 111 countries had abolished capital punishment. The European Court of Human Rights banned the death penalty in all nations within the Council of Europe, stating it violated the European Convention of Human Rights. The Council has thus indirectly persuaded countries in central Europe that have not already joined the Council to abolish this punishment. Other nations, such as the United Kingdom, have refused to extradite prisoners to the United States if they would face possible execution.

Many human rights organizations favor the abolition of the death penalty in those countries that continue to maintain it. The Death Penalty Information Center, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty are illustrations. Most of these and other organizations focus their effort on the United States, which they argue should not find itself in the company of the world's major executing nations.

The Traditional Research Agenda

Much of the social science research agenda on the death penalty is centered in the United States, a country that permits the federal government and state governments to use death as a punishment for homicide. Scholars such as Franklin Zimring designed the agenda to speak to issues thought to be important in the ongoing campaign against capital punishment. These traditionally cover three topics: (1) whether the death penalty deters; (2) whether it is compatible with contemporary standards of decency; and (3) whether courts administer it in a racially neutral or in a discriminatory manner.

Deterrence

With respect to deterrence, most social science research finds no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. The comparison made in the deterrence calculus is between a death sentence and a sentence of life in prison, not between a death sentence and no punishment at all. Because many murders are crimes of passion, no criminal justice policy may be able to deter them.

Deterrence studies have used many different methodologies. Some examine murder rates before and after well-publicized executions; others compare murder rates in adjoining states, one with capital punishment and the other without. The economist Isaac Ehrlich conducted controversial research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment in the 1970s. Unlike most other scholarship, it showed statistically significant deterrent effects and used sophisticated statistical techniques to control for confounding variables. If Ehrlich was correct, execution did indeed save lives. He claimed that for every person executed between 1933 and 1967 in ...