Mike Radelet and Traci Lacock have just published, "Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates?: The Views of Leading Criminologists," in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. You can read the article here, in Adobe .pdf format, thanks to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Here's the text of a news release announcing the article:
Eighty-eight percent of the
country’s top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a
deterrent to homicide, according to a new
study published today in Northwestern University School of Law’s Journal
of Criminal Law and Criminology authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair
of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Traci
Lacock, an attorney and Sociology graduate student in Boulder.
Coming on the heels of New Mexico’s abolition of the death penalty and amid a national trend away from capital punishment because of concerns about its high costs, executing the innocent, unfairness in application, failure to provide “closure” for victims, and other issues, the study entitled “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists” undermines deterrence as a rationale for maintaining the punishment.
The survey relied on questionnaires completed by the most pre-eminent criminologists in the country, including: Fellows in the American Society of Criminology; winners of the American Society of Criminology’s prestigious Southerland Award; and recent presidents of the American Society of Criminology. The American Society of Criminology is the top professional organization of criminologists in the world. Respondents were not asked for their personal opinion about the wisdom of the death penalty, but instead to answer the questions only on the basis of their understandings of the empirical research.
The study concludes: “Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the world’s top criminologists believe that the empirical research has revealed the deterrence hypothesis for a myth … [T]he consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment.”
Coming on the heels of New Mexico’s abolition of the death penalty and amid a national trend away from capital punishment because of concerns about its high costs, executing the innocent, unfairness in application, failure to provide “closure” for victims, and other issues, the study entitled “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists” undermines deterrence as a rationale for maintaining the punishment.
The survey relied on questionnaires completed by the most pre-eminent criminologists in the country, including: Fellows in the American Society of Criminology; winners of the American Society of Criminology’s prestigious Southerland Award; and recent presidents of the American Society of Criminology. The American Society of Criminology is the top professional organization of criminologists in the world. Respondents were not asked for their personal opinion about the wisdom of the death penalty, but instead to answer the questions only on the basis of their understandings of the empirical research.
The study concludes: “Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the world’s top criminologists believe that the empirical research has revealed the deterrence hypothesis for a myth … [T]he consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment.”
Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
Ever since a young Edwin Sutherland first published research on the issue in 1925, criminologists have been interested in the question of whether the death penalty is a more effective deterrent to criminal homicide than long-term imprisonment. At least until a decade ago, there was widespread consensus among criminologists that the death penalty could not be justified on deterrence grounds. In November 1989, in part because "social science research ha[d] found no consistent evidence of crime deterrence through execution," the American Society of Criminology passed a resolution condemning the death penalty, one of only two public policy positions the organization has ever taken. In 1996, Radelet and Akers surveyed sixty-seven leading American criminologists regarding their opinion about the empirical research on deterrence and found that the overwhelming majority of the experts agreed that the death penalty never has been, is not, and never could be superior to long prison sentences as a deterrent to criminal violence.
The research reported in this Article was designed to update the 1996 study and assess if any recent deterrence studies have modified the beliefs of the world's leading criminologists. The results indicate that only a small minority of top criminologists-10% or less, depending on how the question is phrased-believes that the weight of empirical research studies supports the deterrence justification for the death penalty.
These results come despite the publication of several widely-cited studies conducted in the last half dozen years (primarily by economists) that claim to show the death penalty has deterrent effects that criminologists have not spotted.
The research reported in this Article was designed to update the 1996 study and assess if any recent deterrence studies have modified the beliefs of the world's leading criminologists. The results indicate that only a small minority of top criminologists-10% or less, depending on how the question is phrased-believes that the weight of empirical research studies supports the deterrence justification for the death penalty.
These results come despite the publication of several widely-cited studies conducted in the last half dozen years (primarily by economists) that claim to show the death penalty has deterrent effects that criminologists have not spotted.
Related articles are in the deterrence category index.
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