"Capital Punishment: Detterence Effects and Capital Costs," is the title of Fagan's latest scholarship on the subject. LINK
Others find that any deterrent effects are specific to Texas, a state that is atypical by (until 2005) denying juries the choice between execution and life without parole. The studies also may unreasonably inflate the effects of execution by cutting the analyses in 1998, thereby excluding later years when homicides declined, as did executions. Still others find the evidence of deterrence very fragile and unstable, with estimates of deterrence changing wildly with even the slightest adjustments or modifications either in measurement or statistical methods. Such instability should signal caution in not only causal inference, but in using these data in policy decisions or law when life and death are at stake.
Finally, the moving parts in the deterrence story are unpersuasive. Execution would have to achieve a marginal cost beyond the threat of lifetime incarceration. There is no evidence that this is the case. would have to occur with sufficient frequency and with widespread knowledge among would-be murderers to create a credible threat considering the types of murders that might be eligible for execution. There is no sign of that, nor does it seem likely. example, there were 16,137 murders in 2004, according to the FBI, but only 125 death sentences were handed out, and 59 persons - most of whom were convicted a decade earlier - were executed. There are no direct tests of deterrence among murderers, nor are there studies showing their awareness of executions in their own state, much less in far-away states. There is no evidence that if aware of the possibility of execution, a potential murderer would rationally decide to forego homicide and use less lethal forms of violence. Murder is a complex and multiply determined phenomenon, with cyclical patterns for distinct periods of more than 40 years of increase and decline that are not unlike epidemics of contagious diseases. There is nothing in the new deterrence studies that fits their story into this complex causal framework.
As a public policy choice, execution requires tradeoffs of public resources and investments for state legislators and local prosecutors. The costs of administering capital punishment are prohibitive. Even in states where prosecutors infrequently seek the death penalty, the price of obtaining convictions and executions ranges from $2.5 million to $5 million per case (in current dollars), compared to less than $1 million for each killer sentenced to life without parole.30 These costs create clear public policy choices. If the state is going to spend $5 million on law enforcement over the next few decades, what is the best use of that money? Is it to buy two or three executions or, for example, to fund additional police detectives, prosecutors, and judges to arrest and incarcerate criminals who escape punishment because of insufficient law-enforcement resources?
Thanks to Karl Keys for dutifully digesting the Tarlton Law Library's latest RSS feed.
Comments