I read up on the issue of deterrence some, under the impression that there was no evidence that the death penalty is a deterrence to future violent crime.
I was wrong, nominally. There's very little
credible evidence for it, or more precisely, what is there has been statistically discredited or is simply anecdotal. Always question the side that consistently uses the same few studies from 20 years ago. More numerous, varied, and believable imo, are the heap of studies that fail to show a quantifiable deterrent effect. No significant degree of deterrence. You'd think there would be, but nope. This can seem counter-intuitive, since fear of death is natural. These repeated findings make sense though, because premeditated murders start with the question "How can I do this and get away with it?" Pure crimes of passion, if such things exist, do not count because forethought of the consequences can't really come up, including "What if I'm caught?" Some studies even show the opposite effect of implementation of the death penalty, dubbed brutalization. Where present it's usually reflected in higher rates of slain law enforcement agents as violent criminals go to greater lengths to avoid getting caught.
Although statistically, we're not really dealing with numbers high enough to make a statistician jump for joy, even here in Texas (it'll take a few more months
).* That doesn't invalidate all of those studies (as many of them use country-wide death penalties or regional numbers), but it does mean that in that margin of doubt we only have people arguing their opinions. Most who argue for the death penalty no longer claim deterrence as a justification, except in one poignant yet almost entirely insignificant case: it cannot be denied that killing someone prevents them from committing future crimes.
*Incidentally, though it's meaningless in the scope of so many statistical analyses, I'm currently about 12 miles from the crime capitol of the US [img]smile.gif[/img]
[ 05-29-2005, 03:47 PM: Message edited by: Lucern ]