Initial News Coverage of Radelet & Lacock Deterrence Study

The Boulder Daily Camera reports, "Criminologists: Death penalty doesn't deter murder."  It's written by Elizabeth Miller.  Here's an extended excerpt:

Eighty-eight percent of criminologists do not believe the death penalty deters murder, according to a study by University of Colorado sociology professor Michael Radelet released Tuesday.

Radelet, who completed the study with attorney and CU sociology graduate student Traci Lacock, surveyed 77 leading criminologists on the death penalty’s effects on murder rates. The study was published in the Northwestern University School of Law’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.

“The deterrent effect of a punishment is really an effect of two things — severity and certainty — and it turns out that certainty is a more effective deterrent than severity,” Radelet said. “In Colorado, if we wanted to reduce the homicide rate, we would spend our money solving some of the 14,000 homicides that we know of that haven’t been solved. Anything we can do to increase the certainty of apprehension is a much better deterrent than taking people we already know will die in prison and spending millions to determine the date and cause of death.”

According to Radelet, 40 percent of homicide cases in Colorado remain unsolved.

A bill sponsored earlier this spring by state House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville, which was designed to abolish capital punishment, passed the House of Representatives with a 33-32 vote. The bill later failed in the state Senate.

Studies conducted over the last 75 years have supported both sides of the argument on the death penalty, some with similar findings to Radelet’s and some suggesting that the death penalty does deter homicides better than long-term imprisonment.

Other studies often compare frequency of execution with the murder rate in states that have abolished the death penalty and those that have not, Radelet said. He said those studies show Texas, for example, had a murder rate of 5.1 per 100,000 people in 2007 and has put 439 people to death since 1976, while Colorado had a 3.9 murder rate in the same year and has put just one person to death since 1976.

The Daily Camera report also has this table:

The study, by the numbers

88 percent: Criminologists who do not believe the death penalty deters murder

87 percent: Criminologists who do not believe abolishing the death penalty would have a significant effect on murder rates

9 percent: Criminologists who believe that death-penalty states have lower homicide rates than other states

75 percent: Respondents who agreed with the statement: “Debates about the death penalty distract Congress and state legislatures from focusing on real solutions to crime problems.”

77: Number of criminologists who responded to the survey

At the Dallas Morning News Texas Death Penalty blog, Diane Jennings posts, "Local criminologist disagrees on study showing little deterrent value of death penalty."

Professor James Marquart, head of the criminology and sociology program at the University of Texas at Dallas disagrees with a recent study of criminologists nationwide that concluded the death penalty has little deterrent effect. According to a study by Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder and Traci Lacock, an attorney and Sociology graduate student, 88 percent of the country's "top criminologists" don't believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent.

Dr. Marquart, author of The Rope, the Chair and the Needle, and a former correctional officer, didn't participate in the study. He says academic findings "do support that, but in my own view...one must examine the facts in each case. It comes down to 'Do you have the right person?' And if you've got the right perpetrator, factually, legally and everything else, I believe that there is an individual deterrent value to it. And that means that if you have the right person and that person is executed, they are deterred. End of story."

This post from yesterday notes the new scholarship from Radelet and Lacock.  You can read their article here.  Related articles are in the deterrence category index.