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| 11/26 |
| 2007/6/11 [Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:46907 Activity:very high 57%like:46915 |
6/11 (Questionable study says) Death penalty deters homicide (AP story)
http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/132840.html
\_ Oh but this is so politically incorrect ......
\_ `The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a
well-known liberal law professor and death penalty critic, Cass
Sunstein ...... "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are
skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate
consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the
death penalty."'
Mocan: "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he
said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the
death penalty [deters], What am I going to do, hide them?"
\_ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=928649
"We address this error by focusing on the subset of
homicides that have been defined statutorily as
capital-eligible to provide a more sensitive indicator of
the deterrent effects of the death penalty. We use a
public-use data archive based on police descriptions of
homicides from 1976-2003 to construct rates of potentially
death-eligible killings. We estimate that less than 25% of
total criminal homicides are eligible for the capital
sanction under the range of current state statutes. We find
no changes over time in the rate of these capital-eligible
homicides in death penalty states, despite fluctuations in
capital punishment over time. "
\_ The vast command of homicide law possessed by an average
potential murderer combined with these findings is sure to
debunk the study in OP's link! A more serious objection would
be to point out that no purely statistical study can determine
effect, period. -- ilyas |
| 11/26 |
|
| www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/132840.html Graph: Executions down THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Graph: Executions down Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey. What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument: whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. They say between three and 18 lives would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer. The reports have horrified death penalty opponents and some scientists, who vigorously question the data and their implications. So far, the studies have had little effect on public policy. New Jersey's commission on the death penalty this year dismissed the body of knowledge on deterrence as "inconclusive." But the ferocious argument in academic circles could eventually spread to a wider audience. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, who has done some of the research. Deterrent effects A 2003 study Mocan co-wrote, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, said that each execution results in five fewer homicides and that commuting a death sentence means five more. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory: If the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forgo apples or shy from murder). In 2005, there were 16,692 cases of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter nationally. Texas, which is responsible for two-thirds of all executions, had its 15th execution Wednesday. Response The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a well-known liberal law professor and death penalty critic, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago. In 2005, he co-wrote a paper titled Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? "If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple," he told The Associated Press. "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty." Sunstein said that moral questions aside, the data need more study. Some critics say that the deterrent-supporting studies made profound mistakes in their methodology, so their results are untrustworthy. One critic argues that the studies wrongly count all homicides, rather than just those homicides where a conviction could bring the death penalty. And several argue that there are simply too few executions each year in the United States to make a judgment. "We just don't have enough data to say anything," said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the Wharton School of Business who last year co-wrote a sweeping critique of several studies and said they were "flimsy" and appeared in "second-tier journals." This report includes information from the Star-Telegram archives. Death penalty To explore the question of whether the death penalty deters homicide, researchers look at executions and homicides, by year, state or county, trying to tease out the effect of the death penalty on homicides by accounting for other factors, such as unemployment data and per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more. Among the conclusions: A 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University says each execution deters an average of 18 murders. Other studies have estimated deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14. A 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston said the Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over the next four years. A 2004 study by an Emory University professor said that speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect: For every 275 years cut from time spent on Death Row, one murder would be prevented. |
| papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=928649 Texas Law Review, Forthcoming Abstract: Both legal scholars and social scientists have leveraged new research evidence on the deterrent effects of the death penalty into calls for more executions that they claim will save lives and new rules to remove procedural roadblocks and hasten executions. However, the use of total intentional homicides to estimate deterrence is a recurring aggregation error in the death penalty debate in the US: by studying whether executions and death sentences affect all homicides, these studies fail to identify a more plausible target of deterrence - namely, those homicides that are punishable by death. By broadening the targets of deterrence, these studies overestimate the number of murders that are averted by the threat of execution. We address this error by focusing on the subset of homicides that have been defined statutorily as capital-eligible to provide a more sensitive indicator of the deterrent effects of the death penalty. We use a public-use data archive based on police descriptions of homicides from 1976-2003 to construct rates of potentially death-eligible killings. We estimate that less than 25% of total criminal homicides are eligible for the capital sanction under the range of current state statutes. We find no changes over time in the rate of these capital-eligible homicides in death penalty states, despite fluctuations in capital punishment over time. Nor are there differences capital-eligible homicides between death penalty and non-death penalty states. We find similar flat trends in Texas, and also in Harris County, the county that supplies the most death cases in Texas. Using hierarchical regression models to fit growth curve trajectories over time and with a rich set of covariates that account for competing influences on homicide rates, we find no deterrent effects either from the presence of the death penalty or from variation over time in the dosage of any of its components in the states. Similar models for Texas counties produced identical results. The results show that none of the distinctive patterns one might expect from marginal death penalty deterrence can be found in the three decades since Gregg. Where the risk of execution goes up in a death penalty state, the death-eligible cases where that risk should make a difference decline no more than the non-death-eligible cases, nor is the proportion of all homicides that risk a capital sanction in death states any smaller in those states than it is in states without any death penalty. The rate of capital-eligible homicides is insensitive over time to variations in the incidence of executions or to the large swings from one decade to the next in the number or rate of non-death-eligible killings. Our search for death penalty deterrence where it should be a strong influence on homicide rates has produced consistent results: the marginal deterrent effect of the threat or example of execution on those cases at risk for such punishment is invisible. Accepted Paper Series Suggested Citation Fagan, Jeffrey, Zimring, Franklin E and Geller, Amanda B, "Capital Punishment and Capital Murder: Market Share and the Deterrent Effects of the Death Penalty" . |