Studies say Death Penalty a deterrent

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i saw this article… i wish i could see their methods and their data.

i was heartened by this part:
“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-authored a sweeping critique of several studies, and said they were “flimsy” and appeared in “second-tier journals.”
“This isn’t left vs. right. This is a nerdy statistician saying it’s too hard to tell,” Wolfers said. “Within the advocacy community and legal scholars who are not as statistically adept, they will tell you it’s still an open question. Among the small number of economists at leading universities whose bread and butter is statistical analysis, the argument is finished.”
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The key thing about research analysis is that statistical significance isn’t enough. Evidence has to be relative to consequence - if you were deciding which school to send your child to, you might look at one or two league tables of test scores - if a drug company was testing a new medicine, it would probably run at least 5 years of double-blind clinical trials. If we’re talking about a matter of life and death, of the state, acting on our moral authority as a democracy, deciding to end the life of a human being, we need extremely strong and conclusive evidence.
 
I have recently come down from sitting on the fence, in favor of the death penalty. Right now in Michigan there is no death penalty.

I think the methodologies reported in the article are interesting. There really are sociopaths out there who will kill again and again, and they need to be stopped.

The flaw in the methodologies is to ignore whether any punishment has a deterent effect on homicides. I don’t that the possibility of spending life in prison is as much a deterrent as the possibility of being executed.

Cut the nonsense. We need anything and everything that might deter people from committing murder, even negligently.

Last week in our town, two teens (allegedly) murdered an 83-yo Catholic woman who was a nurse for 40 years, and spent her retirement serving others in the church and in civil organizations. The teens committed a home invasion (20 years), attacked an elderly person (not explicitly a crime in Michigan, as far as I can tell), and then murdered her. And she knew them from the neighborhood. She called 9-1-1 for help and the police didn’t get there in time.

No, I’m off the fence. We need the death penalty in Michigan, BADLY. Just a law on the books won’t deter anything, we need lots of executions to convince the bad guys that we mean business. I mean, we need to pass Texas in executions, so we need to get started soon.

If people didn’t commit murders, we wouldn’t have to execute anybody, would we? It’s not like I just want to go out on the streets and grab somebody and execute them.

You kill a cop (my friend), you’ve had it.
You kill my step-father (it happened), you’ve had it.
You kill my co-worker (the retired nurse), you’ve had it.
My uncle shoots my aunt in the abdomen using a shotgun and kills her (while she has her baby in her arms), you’ve had it.

I’ve had enough homicides directly affecting my life. My life is full of statistics, thank you.

Are you telling me that these people’s lives were not worth having a law that might have deterred their murders?

We need prosecutors who will lay out the facts of a case, we need juries that will carefully weigh the facts, and we need suitable mean to punish those who are guilty.
 
Well,first its really ‘Capital punishment’ the death penalty title is misleading and counter-productive! It was never meant to be a ‘deterrent’ for others to learn from but rather a direct action against the "perpetrator"him/herself"and you know what it works every time. I have never seen a murderer …executed by the state, return from the dead and commit more crimes. If a bartender is guilty of allowing a drunken customer to leave his bar,drive and then kill someone …then how about a juror who allows an admitted murderer to go to prison for life…and that prisoner,having nothing to lose,murderes a guard? It costs some $50,000 yearly to house,feed and clothe a con…imagine that money going to help aids victims or some poor kids living in a ghetto with a rotten school system to go to a good private school?..Nino
 
psalm90 said:
Cut the nonsense. We need anything and everything that might deter people from committing murder, even negligently.
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Well then we need to start with the mothers & fathers of children if we don’t want the children to grow up to be murderers. Where are the fathers? In some communities over 50% of the children grow up without fathers. What the heck are the mothers doing? Many are having babies by multiple fathers. Many are also absentee.

Look at the crime data carefully and you will see violence is largely centered around gang activity. What purpose does a gang fulfill? Simple it gives a sense of belonging, structure and order to the child who cannot get it anywhere else. So the kids turn to gangs to get what they cannot get from home, because home life is horrible.

(certainly there are non-gang related violent crimes, but related gang activity makes up the vast majority)

Want to get rid of the death penalty (I know I do) then we have to start by fixing the immorality that our self indulgent society is creating. Until we fix the CORE PROBLEM then many people will be calling for the death/execution of these criminals who run rampant in some of our communities. It is hard to disagree with their calls for the death penalty when you are in their shoes. I moved to a rural area but used to live right in between Gary, IN and Chicago. Not the best place to walk down the streets, not the best place to raise a child, or find peace. But you can find Starbucks every mile or so, and you can find gang writing on walls, and you can find girls that do NOT make good role models for your daughters.

So I moved. I don’t like the death penalty. But I don’t see it as the real solution. We have to fix society before the death penalty will mean anything.
 
psalm90 said:
The flaw in the methodologies is to ignore whether any punishment has a deterent effect on homicides. I don’t that the possibility of spending life in prison is as much a deterrent as the possibility of being executed.

Cut the nonsense. We need anything and everything that might deter people from committing murder, even negligently.
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If death by hanging, drawing and quartering was more of a deterent, would you be in favour of that too?

Surely the death penalty would be even more of a deterent if it was shown live on prime-time TV, would you support that too?

Many people who commit murder have already given up on their own lives, such as the mass murderer at Virginia Tech. If we were to round up the immediate family (parents, wives, children) of a murderer and execute them too, that might be even more of a deterent for such people. Would you support that?

In short, the ends do not justify the means. Killing a human being to prevent other people being killed is not a moral option, especially when we have other ways of stopping the person from doing harm. Utilitarian ethics, or ethics-by-numbers (4n fewer murders would happen if n people were executed, therefore we should execute those people even if .3n of them were innocent) is not Catholic.
 
I used to live in Michigan, which had no death penalty at the time, then moved to Ohio, which did (they later repealed it) now I live in Texas, which has the death penalty, and believe me, if you gather your data by reading the paper, it is no deterrent. We have some of the most spectacular gory murders I ever heard about, surpassing even Detroit in disgust-with-the-human-race factor. Mothers driving their children off piers in vans, mothers slicing and dicing children to pieces, mothers leaving newborns in irrigation canals, fathers raping and murdering infants, fathers raping and murdering their 10 yr old sons, plus gang violence on a scale that makes Detroit look tame: gang members bursting in a home and mowing down everyone inside in revenge–they got the wrong house and killed the wrong people. Here is the point: the death penalty did not deter any of those people. They are still walking around.

In the gang case, the mastermind of the plan walked because of the complexities of the law rules the judge gives in capital cases, 3 were already serving sentences in another mass killing of ex-girlfriends at a bar, and were convicted on charges less than capital murder, 2 escaped to Mexico, 1 was convicted of capital murder but the conviction will probably be lowered in appeal.

Having the death penalty on the books is not a deterrent unless it is carried out, and carried out swiftly. It is extremely hard to get a conviction in a capital case, drags out trials and appeals interminably, for years and decades (the expense of which I don’t even want to contemplate). It certainly has not stopped anyone here from murdering anyone they please for any reason.

You would have to show me a statistical comparison of crime rates before and after a state established or repealed DP, was this done in Ohio and other states who repealed?

at present the justice system is too flawed for DP. Not only are there wrongful convictions, there are too many capital cases which result in hung juries or failure to convict. The only thing DP deters is a swift speedy trial and reasonable execution of sentence (guaranteed by the constitution).
 
puzzleannie said:
It is extremely hard to get a conviction in a capital case, drags out trials and appeals interminably, for years and decades (the expense of which I don’t even want to contemplate). It certainly has not stopped anyone here from murdering anyone they please for any reason…
The only thing DP deters is a swift speedy trial and reasonable execution of sentence (guaranteed by the constitution).
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I agree, and that is one of the many reasons the government has avoided bringing the illegal enemy combatants into US courts captured in the WOT.
 
I wonder at the argument that capital punishment is not a deterrent: what exactly is meant? That it doesn’t deter everyone? That it doesn’t deter many? That no one is deterred? I think the only reasonable interpretation is (the claim) that it is relatively ineffective and doesn’t deter many. That may be true; I really don’t care to argue that point. It is impossible to believe that it doesn’t deter anyone so I would ask: how many preventable murders are required to justify capital punishment on its deterrant effect alone?

I am unimpressed with the claim that the criminal justice system is so broken that there is a high risk of executing innocent people. There is certainly some risk of that, but, if it has happened at all, it is a rare event. For those who disagree I would ask for specifics - name some innocent people who have been executed.

Finally, the use of capital punishment should not be determined by its deterrent effect but by the demands of justice which require a punishment proportional to the crime.

Ender
 
DL82 said:
If death by hanging, drawing and quartering was more of a deterent, would you be in favour of that too?

Surely the death penalty would be even more of a deterent if it was shown live on prime-time TV, would you support that too?

Many people who commit murder have already given up on their own lives, such as the mass murderer at Virginia Tech. If we were to round up the immediate family (parents, wives, children) of a murderer and execute them too, that might be even more of a deterent for such people. Would you support that?

In short, the ends do not justify the means. Killing a human being to prevent other people being killed is not a moral option, especially when we have other ways of stopping the person from doing harm. Utilitarian ethics, or ethics-by-numbers (4n fewer murders would happen if n people were executed, therefore we should execute those people even if .3n of them were innocent) is not Catholic.
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You forget about retribution. It is still moral and lawful for a state to execute a murder based soley on the weight of the punishment fitting the weight of the crime. Therefore is it a completely valid argument to justify capital punishment based on deterrence, since it is not immoral for the state to execute a murderer in any case. This is not the 'ends justifying the means ’ when the means is not immoral.

Read Aquinas and Kant.

Also, you cannot go around defining the other side of this argument as not catholic, read the catechism. It stresses to preserve life in cases of capital punishment but does not call the death penalty in any case, retributive or deterrent, immoral. Get your facts straight please before you imply your opposition is not following Catholicism.
 
Ender said:
I am unimpressed with the claim that the criminal justice system is so broken that there is a high risk of executing innocent people. There is certainly some risk of that, but, if it has happened at all, it is a rare event. For those who disagree I would ask for specifics - name some innocent people who have been executed.
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deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?&did=2238
 
redmars3000 said:
Also, you cannot go around defining the other side of this argument as not catholic, read the catechism. It stresses to preserve life in cases of capital punishment but does not call the death penalty in any case, retributive or deterrent, immoral. Get your facts straight please before you imply your opposition is not following Catholicism.
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The original post was defending the Death Penalty on the grounds of deterent value. That’s utilitarianism. It’s saying that a small number of people can be executed, not because of justice, but because it will prevent a larger number of murders. That’s against the teaching of the Catholic Church.

I didn’t say that the Death Penalty itself, to prevent the guilty from commiting a further crime, or to fulfil natural justice, is not Catholic, just that its deterent value is irrelevant to any discussion of the morality of capital punishment in Catholic terms.
 
Back in 1994 or 95, when I was in college, one of my history professors speciality was criminology. He had done his doctoral thesis on the deterent value of the death penalty. He said that you can basically go back as far as you like, and at no point in history can it be shown that the death penalty deters crime. What he said has always been shown to deter crime is the swiftness and certainty of punishment. People here that end up on death row stay there for years before they’re ever executed. The punishment and the crime has been separated by an extended period of time, so the punishment doesn’t have the same impact it would if it were carried out immediately. Also, many people who get penalties of many years in prison serve only a short period of time, so there’s no certantity of the punishment. Anyway. I always found his comments on the subject interesting.
 
DL82 said:
The original post was defending the Death Penalty on the grounds of deterent value. That’s utilitarianism. It’s saying that a small number of people can be executed, not because of justice, but because it will prevent a larger number of murders. That’s against the teaching of the Catholic Church.

I didn’t say that the Death Penalty itself, to prevent the guilty from commiting a further crime, or to fulfil natural justice, is not Catholic, just that its deterent value is irrelevant to any discussion of the morality of capital punishment in Catholic terms.
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You misunderstand the nature of deterrence. The following quote is from Cardinal Avery Dulles (First Things, 2001).

“The purposes of criminal punishment are rather unanimously delineated in the Catholic tradition. Punishment is held to have a variety of ends that may conveniently be reduced to the following four: rehabilitation, defense against the criminal, deterrence, and retribution.”

Ender
 
The only deterrence that matters where the death penalty is concerned is that it deters the person executed from offending again, as has been mentioned above. If fear of the death penalty happens to deter someone from committing a capital crime, well and good, but that’s just gravy. What matters is that a killer, rapist, whatever, properly identified and proven guilty beyond all doubt, is put in a position where he/she can’t do it again, no way, no how.
"Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man. (Gen. 9:6, NKJV
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I didn’t say that the Death Penalty itself, to prevent the guilty from commiting a further crime, or to fulfil natural justice, is not Catholic…
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Yes, in fact you did…
Originally Posted by DL82
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In short, the ends do not justify the means. Killing a human being to prevent other people being killed is not a moral option, especially when we have other ways of stopping the person from doing harm.
…
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Killing one person to prevent the death of another person by the same criminal is still utilitarianism. This is not against Catholic teaching.

CC 2265-2267

If you mistyped what you meant, that is one thing. But please publicly correct your mistake rather than cover it up.
 
redmars3000 said:
If you mistyped what you meant, that is one thing. But please publicly correct your mistake rather than cover it up.
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I stand corrected. I still think that killing when there are other ways to stop someone committing another crime is wrong, and the Church today tends to agree with that, but I had worded that badly.
 
melensdad said:
Want to get rid of the death penalty (I know I do) then we have to start by fixing the immorality that our self indulgent society is creating…We have to fix society before the death penalty will mean anything.
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I agree with you, but do you really think that’s going to happen? In this society, do you really think that’s going to happen?

You can’t fix this society. All you can do is withdraw from it. You did it by moving away from it; so did I, along with pulling the plug on the lobotomy box. I don’t go to movies any more, and I don’t listen to the radio.

I’m done. The only thing that I want out of this world is me, hopefully in a state of grace.
 
Emily -

A couple of things regarding your list of innocent men executed by the state:

Your referece is to an anti-capital punishment web site. That doesn’t necessarily mean what they say is wrong but you need to find corroboration for their claims.

I think this article from the Washington Post written by Theodore Shaw, the head of the Legal Defense Fund, is perhaps a better source; I think it makes the case for both of us. Shaw writes they: “have investigated several questionable executions, reexamining forensic evidence and re-interviewing witnesses. In at least four of the cases, it is now clear that the individuals executed almost certainly did not commit the crimes for which they were convicted.” Let’s leave the number at four (not the eight you cite) questionable executions; that should still be enough to make your point without having to debate the more doubtful cases (like Gary Gilmore).

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001313.html

Shaw goes on to say: “Although none has been officially exonerated, the evidence that has come to light since they were put to death points overwhelmingly to their innocence, and two of these cases are being reinvestigated.” As Shaw concedes, there is no case where an innocent man is known to have been executed although there are at least four (Willingham, Cantu, DeLuna, and Griffin) whose innocence is “overwhelmingly” implied.

For this argument let’s assume that all four were innocent. Their cases go back to 1980; can we estimate the number of innocent people killed over that period of time by murderers who were not executed, got out of jail, and killed again? I’m sure someone has this number for the US but I don’t happen to know it. I did however run across a number for the UK: since about 1965 (when their law banning handguns went into effect) there have been over 120 people murdered by repeat murderers - an average of three a year in a population of 60 million. A proportionate number for the US would be 15 a year.

Over the period of time from the first crime (Griffin, 1980) until now it is reasonable to assume that about 400 innocent citizens have been murdered by repeat murderers (assuming the US rate is similar to the rate in the UK). That’s probably not the correct number, but whatever the real number is, I’m sure it’s a lot bigger than four.

As someone else on this thread has said: the death penalty certainly deters the criminal from repeating his murders. So I ask you: how many innocent deaths committed by repeat murderers are you willing to accept to balance your concern about innocent deaths resulting from wrongful executions by the state?

Ender
 
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