Studies say death penalty deters crime

[Colobo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_on_re_us/death_penalty_deterrence

Among the conclusions:

• Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

• The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

• Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

In 2005, there were 16,692 cases of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter nationally. There were 60 executions.

The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a well-known liberal law professor, University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein. A critic of the death penalty, in 2005 he co-authored 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."

[Matsubara]

1. That may be. Problem is you can't un-kill someone who was wrongly executed.

When there is a 1000% foolproof way of being ABSOLUTELY sure that the plaintiff is guilty of whatever heinous crime, I might support it, but as long as there is that possibility of a wrong conviction, I'm against it. How many people have already been exonerated for crimes they were convicted of on the basis of DNA evidence that came to light later?

[BlooInBloo]

6. yyyyyyyyup.

[GreenPartyVoter]

28. So true

[blondeatlast]

32. Exactly. nt

[JeffR]

2. So our disgraceful murder rate would be even worse without

the death penalty?

Not that I believe a word of these studies, but one way or the other, it's another reason to be ashamed of America, and another reason is the last thing I need these days.

[TahitiNut]

3. If an execution deters 18 murders ...

... does it make any difference whatsoever whether the person executed is GUILTY?

In other words, if we justify capital punishment on the basis of the "deterrent effect" then we could justify putting anyone to death to accomplish the same. We really need not be concerned with whether they're actually guilty. After all, what's one innocent life compared to eighteen? All we have to do is pretend.

Can anyone else see the slippery moral slope that creates?

[katsy]

4. Maybe they mean this applies only in amerikka.

Murder rates in Canada and European countries are lower than ours and they don't have the death penalty.

Must be our amerikkan exceptionalism :sarcasm:

[LostInAnomie]

5. I read that article on Yahoo.

The results (as Yahoo stated them at least) were confusing. It almost sounded like the research found that executing murderers kept the murderers from killing more people. That wouldn't make sense though.

From what I've read in the past this research is counterintuitive of what almost all other research has found in the past. Most studies have found that it is not a deterrent and the the murder rate actually rises immediately after an execution. Who knows though?

[Colobo]

7. In Florida, justice was served a couple of days ago

In 2002, 5 bastards, four of them being my countrymen (sadly), kidnapped a young couple, both of them high schoolers, in a night club in Miami, just because they were bored and wanted to have some fun. They gangraped the girl brutally in front of her boyfriend, ignoring her desperate pleas for her life. Not only that, after the five of them were done raping and beating the crap out of her, they decided it was cool to force her to her knees, you know, to exceute her in front of her desperate boyfriend... and they blowed her head off.

Oh, by the way, the guys also robbed them.

Now, the first of them to be sentenced will get the injection soon. Victor Caraballo, a 39 old man, has been sentenced to the death penalty. Of course, the opponents of the capital punishment over here and in Puerto Rico have forgotten about what this man and his cronies did, and are trying to "save his life". I saw an interview with his parents today on WAPA America (Puerto Rican channel on DirecTV) and it was sad to see them suffer... but that's what their son deserves for the brutal crime he participated in.

I also heard the victim's mother is very pleased with the sentence and plans to watch the execution. I can't blame her.

You can read about the case and about the victim's mother reaction here:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/miami/sfl-dangel08jun08,0,4177282.story?track=rss

Victor Caraballo is a disgrace for his family, his country, his fellow countrymen here in the state of Florida and for himself. I have no pity for that bastard.

[MonkeyFunk]

12. What's that got to do with whether or not the DP

works as a deterrent?

Pro death-penalty people love to bring in non-sequiturs like this, but for what reason, I'll never understand. The discussion isn't about whether Victor Caraballo is a good man. It's about whether executing him will prevent other murders.

[Colobo]

17. Now that he'll be dead, he won't kill anyone else.

[MonkeyFunk]

20. Do you really believe

the studies you cite are discussing whether or not the subjects of the Death Penalty will kill again? How strange.

By your line of reasoning, killing ANYONE will ensure that they never kill anyone else. If we had a 100% Death Penalty rate, there wouldn't be any murders - well, except for the state sponsored ones.

Now back to the point - what does the story about Mr. Caraballo have to do with the topic you posted?

[blondeatlast]

33. And the brutally murdered young couple are just as dead. nt

[Colobo]

34. Doesn't matter; the rapists/killers will pay.

[ashling]

8. Well, Dick Cheney is de turd

but he's still a criminal

[AlCzervik]

9. that study should come here and talk to california, i don't see murder rates going

down in norcal, in the last month alone we've had 4 deaths that were the victims of drive bys, the victims weren't gang members, they were hit by stray gunfire, one girl was just walking to her car after going ti the library and bang, she's gone. It's been awful here lately, everyday another teenager dead.

[jellybeancurse]

10. Based on the article there seems to be some rather large

statistical problems with the study. Even if it is correct that it deters murder, it still doesn't justify killing someone.

[Solon]

11. Well, one section of this study is bullshit...

At this post by stuggle4progress:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2875967&mesg_id=2876176

Illustrates that homicides in Illinois has been REDUCED from a high of 961 in 2002 to 766 in 2005. To use the same methodology as this so called "study", that means that 195 people were saved due to the execution moratorium.

ON EDIT: I researched a little further, using the links in the post I linked to, apparently Illinois, in 2005, has had the lowest per capita murder rate since 1965. In addition the spike in 2001 seems to be an aberration, and still involves less murders than throughout the years from 1989 to 1998.

[Madspirit]

13. ...and MANY studies say it doesn't.

Plus, that's irrelevant to whether or not it's moral, in my opinion. ...but we could play dueling studies all day and all night.
Lee

[Solon]

14. What I find appalling about the study is the advocation of...

reducing the time till execution, which, by default, means that more innocent people will be executed by the state if the time or amount of appeals are reduced.

Plus this study I take with a huge fucking cube of salt. I mean, for crying out loud, one of the guys who started the study is a fucking Economist!

[Edweird]

15. I think it's pretty clear, that death penalty or not, Americans like to kill each other.

[MasterDarkNinja]

16. Those numbers don't sound right

• Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

• The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

I'm not sure what the moratorium did that it mentions, but I'm assuming it made it harder to execute people and caused less executions. But only 150 extra murders over four years after it makes the 'an execution stops 18 murders' statistic sound very hard to believe.

I don't doubt that executions lower murder rates though. I've heard that before we invaded Afganistan suppossibly they were super strict and killed people for almost anything (like possessing an 'unholy book'), and had almost zero crime.

[Hippo_Tron]

23. Could it be that the 150 additional murders were due to other factors?

The economy, especially for the lower classes, hasn't been nearly as good as it was before 2000.

[NewJeffCT]

29. that was what I was going to say, too

Since Bush took over, the economy has sucked for a lot of people, especially the poor & working class. When the economy sucks, crime usually goes up...

[Solon]

36. I don't see how, the number of homicides in 2005 are the lowest since 1967, and per capita lower...

Than in 1965. They were in the 4 digits for most of the 1980s and 1990s.

Look here:

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/ilcrime.htm

[JHB]

30. Exactly how is that claim of "150 additional homicides" calculated?

In short, WHICH 150 murders would not have happened?

Did they check through the actual case records to figure some sort of "potential deterrent effect" in each case, and then somehow determined how many of those cases would have crossed the threshold and not happened if there had been some given level of "deterrent effect" from the DP?

Or is 150 just the difference between the actual numbers and the estimate based on their statistical model?

My questions for the "handful of statistics nerds" mentioned in the article is "How is this statistical model tied to reality? How did you test it? and How did it perform in those tests?"

[Solon]

37. They pulled the number out of their asses, period....

Look at my post # 36.

[canetoad]

18. Bullshit

until I see the full data published.

Some studies are of the same use as political polls. You get the answer you are looking for.

[emilyg]

19. It would deter me from a life of crime

If I was executed - I would never commit a crime again. :D

[canetoad]

21. Hehe I think thats a funny reply

even though you will get shit for it

[SeattleGirl]

22. The findings aren't going to change my mind. I am against the death

penalty, period.

[Hippo_Tron]

24. It's also cheaper too

Oh wait, it's not.

[JI7]

25. well, how about nations that don't have the death penalty but a far lower murder rate

than we have ?

[Mythsaje]

26. I think it's funny (in a sick way)

that the Right thinks that government can't do anything right, but assumes that it can decide who deserves to die.

[Jonathan50]

27. In general I think that states with the death penalty have higher murder rates..

Than those without the death penalty..

I don't have time to look it up right now, but I seem to recall that it is true.

[NorthernSpy]

31. Don't be a sucker! Read "Econometric Modeling as Junk Science"...

Ted Goertzel, professor of Sociology at Rutgers, argues that econometric modeling is largely junk science: unempirical "analyses" based on arbitrarily assigned values that fail to predict trends when applied to other data.

Do you believe that every time a prisoner is executed in the United States, eight future murders are deterred? Do you believe that a 1% increase in the number of citizens licensed to carry concealed weapons causes a 3.3% decrease in the state's murder rate? Do you believe that 10 to 20% of the decline in crime in the 1990s was caused by an increase in abortions in the 1970s? Or that the murder rate would have increased by 250% since 1974 if the United States had not built so many new prisons?

If you were misled by any of these studies, you may have fallen for a pernicious form of junk science: the use of mathematical models with no demonstrated predictive capability to draw policy conclusions. These studies are superficially impressive. Written by reputable social scientists from prestigious institutions, they often appear in peer reviewed scientific journals. Filled with complex statistical calculations, they give precise numerical "facts" that can be used as debaters’ points in policy arguments. But these "facts" are will o' the wisps. Before the ink is dry on one study, another appears with completely different "facts." Despite their scientific appearance, these models do not meet the fundamental criterion for a useful mathematical model: the ability to make predictions that are better than random chance.

Goertzel continues:

Although economists are the leading practitioners of this arcane art, sociologists, criminologists and other social scientists have versions of it as well. It is known by various names, including "econometric modeling," "structural equation modeling," and "path analysis." All of these are ways of using the correlations between variables to make causal inferences. The problem with this, as anyone who has had a course in statistics knows, is that correlation is not causation. Correlations between two variables are often "spurious" because they are caused by some third variable. Econometric modelers try to overcome this problem by including all the relevant variables in their analyses, using a statistical technique called "multiple regression." If one had perfect measures of all the causal variables, this would work. But the data are never good enough. Repeated efforts to use multiple regression to achieve definitive answers to public policy questions have failed.

But many social scientists are reluctant to admit failure. They have devoted years to learning and teaching regression modeling, and they continue to use regression to make causal arguments that are not justified by their data. I call these arguments the myths of multiple regression, and I would like to use four studies of murder rates as examples.

After explaining why the studies intended to prove the homicide-reducing effects of abortions, executions, concealed handguns actually prove nothing of the kind, Goertzel observes that

The scientific community does not have good procedures for acknowledging the failure of a widely used research method. Methods that are entrenched in graduate programs at leading universities and published in prestigious journals tend to be perpetuated. Many laymen assume that if a study has been published in a peer reviewed journal, it is valid. The cases we have examined show that this is not always the case. Peer review assures that established practices have been followed, but it is of little help when those practices themselves are faulty.

and ends with a recommendation for all of us:

It is time to admit that the emperor has no clothes. When presented with an econometric model, consumers should insist on evidence that it can predict trends in data other than the data used to create it. Models that fail this test are junk science, no matter how complex the analysis.

Me, I strongly recommend that everyone read the entire article. Don't be a sucker! Arm your brain!

[Toots]

35. Why is it America is the only westernized country that believes this?

I certainly do not. In fact I would suggest just the opposite. If you teach people that killing is a way to get revenge or "justice" people will do what they are taught. Same for hitting. If you spank your child the odds are yourt child will grow up believing hitting is the way to enforce your rules. Wife beating will work for them..