What If the Death Penalty Saves Lives?
Sunday November 18, 2007
Background: Types of Executions
If we assume that more people are afraid of death than prison, then it stands to reason that if the death penalty is on the table as a possible punishment for murder, it could be a factor in persuading some would-be murderers not to kill.
So when recent studies indicated that the death penalty may have a deterrent effect after all, I wasn't surprised. The New York Times reports:
But what if they're right? What if the death penalty does, in fact, deter murder? This is a possibility that opponents of the death penalty, such as myself, need to confront. So let's confront it:
Keep reading:
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So when recent studies indicated that the death penalty may have a deterrent effect after all, I wasn't surprised. The New York Times reports:
For the first time in a generation, the question of whether the death penalty deters murders has captured the attention of scholars in law and economics, setting off an intense new debate about one of the central justifications for capital punishment.It's easy to critique these studies. The article cites the fact that capital prosecutions cost many millions of dollars that, if spent on policing, might save an equal or greater number of lives. The article also points out that the U.S. murder rate has more or less paralleled that of Canada, a country that abolished the death penalty over 30 years ago. And the fact that the death penalty has only been legal in the United States for 30 years, impractically limiting the study's sample size, is significant. So these twelve studies may very well tell us nothing at all.
According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.
The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.
The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise.
But what if they're right? What if the death penalty does, in fact, deter murder? This is a possibility that opponents of the death penalty, such as myself, need to confront. So let's confront it:
- The sentence of death is often pronounced in cases where the victim is later cleared--sometimes posthumously. Is executing innocent people worthwhile if it has the net effect of saving lives?
- Keeping every American citizen under around-the-clock video surveillance would probably prevent countless murders--as would-be murderers would know that their actions would be recorded, and available for review by law enforcement personnel. Is monitoring every American citizen worthwhile if it has the net effect of saving lives?
- If civilized execution methods deter murders, then it's certainly possible, and I would say extremely likely, that executing people by slowly torturing them to death might deter even more murders. Is execution by torture worthwhile if it has the net effect of saving lives?
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Comments
Most murders are spontaneous events that occur when the perpetrator is high on drugs or alcohol or mentally deranged. I am sure in such a state they are going to hesitate to kill because they might end up on death row. I mean, c’mon, grab a piece of the reality pie, please. The death penalty wastes money and does not deter killers (most of whom are total losers who can’t even think an hour ahead rather than years ahead). Life in prison without parole is easier, cheaper, takes killers off the streets for good, and gives room for false convictions to be reversed.
Does death penalty work?
In 2002 Americans were very happy because they had only 16.638 criminal homicides: and they were right because from 1984 to 1993 criminal homicides were 22.000 per year. Au contraire, in the same 2002, in Italy we were very afraid because, with a population that is grosso modo one fifth of the American one, we had 638 criminal homicides, and we were very concerned about it, even if those 638 were less than one third the homicides we had in 1991. Americans love to think the drop is a benefit of the death penalty. We cannot agree because we are a death penalty free country. (In Europe this punishment is strictly forbidden and the majority of the world is abolitionist).
Actually Italy ended capital punishment in 1888 and had it again only under fascism. In those sad years the homicide rate was five times bigger that we have now, and, in the twenty years following the definitive end of the death penalty (1948-1968), the homicide rate dropped from 5 to 1,4. Something like this happened in Canada in the years that followed the end of capital punishment in 1976. Curiously, in the same year, the Supreme Court gave green light to the “new and improved” American death penalty and, with the shooting of Gary Gilmore (17th January 1977): the hangman was back in business and the experiment begun. Now, after more than 1.000 human sacrifices, we can say with Justice Blackmun: “the death penalty experiment has failed”.
Death penalty is an enormous waste of lives, money, time and resources. This cancer is destroying the American justice. It is not a deterrent and kills the poor, the weak, the mad, the illiterate, and the black. In the thousand killed some were innocent, many mad and much many not guilty of a capital crime, but quite all will be alive, and some free, if they have had a competent counsel. Hangman states are not in a better situation of states without death penalty. Sooner or later Americans will realise that death penalty is and immoral, indecent, illegal, expensive, stupid, cruel, dangerous, racist, classist, not working violation of human rights.
Best regards.
Dott. Claudio Giusti
Via Don Minzoni 40, 47100 Forlì, Italia
Claudio Giusti had the privilege and the honour to participate in the first congress of the Italian section of Amnesty International; later he was one of the founders of the World Coalition Against The Death Penalty.
Arguments about the deterrent effects of capital punishment may be considered germane by some, but it seems to me that there is a more important, underlying consideration. As a libertarian, I reject the notion that the state in some way owns my life. If the state does not own my life, then by what right can it take it?
I have debated this question with Dr. Mary Ruwart, a well-known libertarian philosophical writer. It is her opinion, as I understand it, that it is not the state that takes a life in a capital case, but the state acting as an agent for the victim’s survivors or family. My objection to that argument is that the penalty may be applied in the absence of, or even over the objections of, survivors.
Furthermore, what is the legal or moral justification for the state to act in this capacity? I guess we might conclude that state-conducted executions are in some way superior to private executions, such as might occur in some place like Pakistan, but I am not convinced. Perhaps we would be better off with a combined system wherein if the survivors demanded execution they would be allowed to do it themselves under state supervision.
In any event, if there are going to be executions conducted under authority of the state, in a democratic society such executions absolutely must be conducted in public, not hidden away in a prison with a small group of selected witnesses. If the public sanctions killing by the state in the name of “society,” then society damn well ought to watch what they have approved.
I may be only 16 yrs old but I will say that the Death Penalty could be the one thing that keeps young people thinking. If the studies show that for every inmate executed, 3 to 18 people don’t get murdered, then let it be. What if you had a little girl that got raped? Then you would want to see them killed. Even though putting the guilty person on parole is cheaper, does it really give you satisfaction? No it doesn’t. Most convicts on parole get out early for good behavior. And most of them will be on good behavior until they get out and go on a killing spree or raping little girls. Think about it a little. Think if it was your child that got hurt or murdered. You would want revenge. An eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth. So what’s so wrong about it?
Why we have death punishment in US and WHO support it?
Is fascinating to notice that some Christians (all Protestant) are mainly
the strongest supporters of this barbaric practice. All this people that don’t believe in Evolution, Republicans, etc. are the people who love the smell of roasted meat in the electric chair.
I think this topic is being approached from a wrong angle by both sides. First, execution cannot be a punishment because the person receiving the punishment is eliminated, and there can be no punishment without a “punishee”. Second, executions can and should be defended as a form of euthanasia for heinous murderers (see Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno for deatils about this position). Third, I’m sorry but Libertarian or non-Libertarian, people do not “own” their lives, bodies, etc. Such things are not commodities, and anyway you would not have any rights without a State to guarantee them. Finally, there is nothing inherently conservative or reactionary about executions. Leftwingers have supported executions throughout history.
Many you and I are reading different studies, but the ones I read say that the certainity and rapidity of punishment for crime are much greater deterants than the nature of the punishment. Obviously, the fact that jails are training camps for increasing the criminality of those incarcerated isn’t doing much good either. My studies, I don’t know about yours, also say that most crimes are committed by repeat offenders.
What that implies is simple, instead of GIVING $700 billion to wall street banking firms, no strings attached, you spend the same amont on improving courts and jails. Someone who is a “tough” to begin with isn’t going to be all that threatened at the prospect of spending a decade in a jail with like minded like behaving sorts while his punishment is being sorted out. Make sure he’s guilty to start with and then put him in a jail where he doesn’t see another human being for years on end and you may actually have some effect on him.
The other problem with capital punishment is certainty. With the well-named “criminal justice system” being oriented mostly toward increasing the score card of prosecutors, the liklihood that you’ve got the wrong guy walking toward the chair is not vanishingly small. What sort of deterant is it that allows someone to commit a capital crime and then has everyone else stop looking for the perpetrator because “justice has been served”?