Robert Rosenquist

John Johnston

English 1B

10 February 2006

Capital Punishment: Deterrence and Brutalization

            During the October 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush and Al Gore were asked if they believed that capital punishment deters crime. Bush, who as governor of Texas presided over a remarkable 152 executions, affirmed his belief that "it's the only reason to be for it. [...] I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives" (Bush). Gore, too, professed his confidence in the deterrent power of capital punishment. Among experts and academics, however, opinions on the death penalty's deterrent effect are less homogenous. Statistical studies have produced conflicting results with disputed merit. Some researchers hypothesize that a perverse, counterintuitive factor, dubbed the "brutalization effect," may sometimes nullify or even paradoxically sabotage and reverse whatever deterrent effect capital punishment has upon homicide rates.

            The brutalization effect is seen when a state-sponsored execution seems to incite murderous activity rather than discouraging it. The argument goes that such executions cause the public to devalue human life and demonstrate, by example, that killing people is an appropriate and just method for correcting grave offenses (Shepherd; Radelet et al.).

            An article published by the New York Times in 2000 may support the brutalization hypothesis. State-by-state analysis revealed that over the previous twenty years, the homicide rate had been 48 percent to 101 percent higher in states with the death penalty than in states without it. Ten of the twelve states with without the death penalty had homicide rates below the national average. By comparison, half of the states allowing the death penalty had rates above the national average (Bonner et al.).

            The deterrent effect is a more intuitive concept; many in the general public expect that capital punishment should dissuade more capital crimes than less extreme sentences. In 1991, a Gallup poll found that 51 percent of Americans thought that capital punishment deterred murder. A 1996 survey of past and current presidents of the country's top academic criminological societies, however, indicated that 83.6 percent of these experts did not think that the death penalty had a deterrent effect. The same survey revealed that, although they were much more likely than the general public to be aware of the fact that states without the death penalty were not more likely to have high homicide rates than neighboring death penalty states, 67.1 percent of the polled criminology experts did not believe in the brutalization hypothesis (Radelet et al.).

            The modern academic debate surrounding the deterrent effect of capital punishment began in the 1970s with the publication of two economic papers by Isaac Ehrlich. Ehrlich was the first to separate and measure the effect of multiple factors upon homicide rates, including the application of capital punishment. Based on his findings, Ehrlich estimated that each execution resulted in between 7 and 8 fewer murders. Subsequently, several independent researchers began examining the question of deterrence using Ehrlich's original data, with frustratingly mixed results. Some researchers confirmed Ehrlich's finding of a negative correlation between execution rates and homicide rates, but others found no deterrent effect whatsoever (Shepherd).

            These early studies were later criticized for their inherent technical flaws and unsophisticated methods (Jost). For example, these studies often measured the aggregated effect of the death penalty on the nation as a whole even when several individual states did not employ capital punishment and so would not be expected to feel the deterrent effect in question. An additional problem of the techniques employed was that researchers were unable to control for regional influences on murder rates, such as local unemployment rates. Furthermore, the number of observations made by Ehrlich and others were relatively few when compared with more modern economic studies, calling into question the validity of their conclusions (Shepherd).

            Beginning in the mid 90s, a new wave of studies were conducted to address these problems by utilizing panel datasets. Panel datasets, in contrast to the time-series datasets of earlier studies, allow researchers to control for demographic, economic and jurisprudential differences between neighboring states or counties. In addition, panel datasets afford many more observations; a national time-series dataset over ten years would have a mere 10 observations, whereas a fifty-state panel dataset over the same time period would contain 5000 (Shepherd).

            At least eight deterrence studies using panel data from the fifty states have been published in economic journals since 1994, with the unanimous conclusion that capital punishment has some deterrent effect. This consensus, however, did not cross disciplines. Most of the empirical studies published in sociology journals since 1994, often examining the deterrent effect within individual states, found no evidence that capital punishment deterred homicides. Additionally, both of the two empirical studies published in law reviews within the same timeframe concluded that there was no deterrent effect (Shepherd).

            A theory proposed in 2004 by Joanna Shepherd, an assistant professor at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, may explain these baffling discrepancies. Examining a tremendous amount of panel data from all 3,054 U.S. counties over a period from 1976 to 1996, Shepherd found that, of the 27 states which had executed people over the period sampled, only 6 had experienced a net deterrent effect. In contrast, 13 states actually experienced increased murder rates. The 6 states in which executions resulted in overall deterrence were also the states in which the highest number of executions took place (Shepherd). Shepherd theorized that, although each single state execution appeared to brutalize society and incite more murders, the deterrent effect of capital punishment eventually eclipsed the brutalization effect once a state exceeded a threshhold level of approximately nine executions. And so, many of the earlier, seemingly unreconcilable findings of earlier studies may have each been correct; while most of the states feel no deterrence or worse, the 6 states which do—Florida, Delaware, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and Nevada—are enough to make the U.S. net deterrent effect from executions positive (Shepherd).

            In conclusion, it proves exceedingly difficult for one to say whether or not capital punishment deters murders; empirical studies into the matter are often oversimplified and posit contradictory results, and the most recent evidence indicates that the answer could vary widely depending upon the application. While Sherpherd's study is unlikely to have the last word in the deterrence debate, it is peculiar to think that, in at least a few cases, too much of a bad thing may be a good thing.

Works Cited

            Radelet, Micheal L., and Ronald L. Akers. "Deterrence and the death penalty: The views of the experts." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology Fall 2006: 87. :1-16. Proquest. Proquest. 10 Feb 2006 <http://www.il.proquest.com/>.

            Bonner, Raymond, and Ford Fessenden. "States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates." The New York Times 22 September 2000. 10 Feb 2006 <http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22DEAT.html?ex=1139806800&en=799dff0b0e45b6de&ei=5070>.

            Jost, Kenneth. "Death Penalty Controversies." The CQ Researcher 15.33 (2005). 10 February 2006 <http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2005092300>.

            Shepherd, Joanna. "Deterrence versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States." Michigan Law Review 4 (July 2005). 10 Feb 2006 <http://www.terry.uga.edu/economics/seminar_series/documents/Shepherd-CapitalPunishment.pdf>.

Bush, George W. "The Third Gore-Bush Presidential Debate." 17 October 2000. <http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2000c.html>.