Posted: April 1st, 2022

Does the Death Penalty Discourage Murder?

Does the Death Penalty Discourage Murder?
The death penalty remains a controversial issue in the United States and other countries all over the world. The argument behind the theory is that the use of capital punishment is that the threat of execution is sufficient enough to scare criminals from committing a murder which they had otherwise intended. And since one of the major interests of the society is to avert murder, the death penalty remains the strongest punishment they can use to prevent and lower homicides. Even then, public debates continue to intensify, with different groups having conflicting views and opinions about the issue.
Dozens of studies seeking to determine whether, indeed, the death penalty deters murder have been conducted. Some of the findings are either contradictory or inconclusive. Some researchers are convinced that capital punishment truly deters murder, thereby lowering homicide rates and saving lives. A good number of researchers, on the other hand, conclude that the death penalty increases homicides, while others believe it has no significant effect on murder rates.
According to studies, more than 50% of Americans believe that the death penalty is effective in deterring homicides, while some support the abolishment of the same. A good percentage of the most recent studies show that, indeed, execution saves lives. The analyses show that for every murder inmate executed, an average of three to eighteen lives are saved. However, the findings vary with more pronounced results in some studies. The most reliable studies conducted in the past decade sought to compare the number of executions with changes in the murder cases in different jurisdictions over time. One of these studies examined a total of 3,054 counties over a period of twenty years.
All these studies that support the use of the death penalty have been subject to numerous criticisms, most of them from scholars and economists who do not agree with the use of crime as a form of punishment. Economists John J. Donohue III and Justin Wolfers point out that the death penalty is rarely used such that the studies conducted based on the numbers cannot be reliably used to accurately depict the changes in the homicide rates over the years. In fact, some states and countries that do not employ the death penalty record lower murder cases than those that do. And this can not be evidence enough to prove the failure of deterrence. Maybe, the states using the death penalty would record even higher murder cases if they ditched the death penalty.

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