Does the death penalty stop future crime?
Authors: John H Donahue, Yale University Law School; Justin Wolfers, Warton School – University of Pennsylvania
Goal of the Study: This study revolves around an evaluation of the utilization of the death penalty in the United States spanning from the Furman and Gregg decisions and the ways that evidence in support of the death penalty is very fragile and suspect. The goal of the paper is to evaluate (in an informal meta-analysis) the implications that the death penalty brings regarding its deterrent effects. Essentially: Does the utilization of the death penalty stop further crime from occurring?
Background Information: The death penalty has been implemented in the United States since the onset of colonial times. The modalities in which it has been implemented, along with the crimes that it has been a penalty for, have varied drastically over the last several centuries. Thorsten Sellin (a sociologist in the early 1900s) was the first scholar to doubt the efficacy of the deterrent effects of the implementation of the death penalty. Sellin’s work summarized implicates the premise that the death penalty is actually not helping to save lives, nor deter future criminal offending. Due to his work, there was an informal moratorium starting in the late 1960s. Said moratorium was cemented in legal precedent with the Furman decision in 1972 on behalf of the Supreme Court, stating that the existing death penalty legislation was unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg in 1976 flipped the previous decision in Furman, allowing death penalties to be re-instituted across the nation. Although the Supreme Court did not admit to the utilization of this work, the 1975 publication of Isaac Erlich’s work that claims that every person sentenced to death saves an additional eight lives was introduced to the court by Solicitor General Robert Bork. Since these events, there has been many evaluations of the death penalty that have varied findings with regards to whether or not it deters ensuing criminal behavior. As such, the article discussed here evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of these findings in an effort to provide a final conclusion as to whether or not the death penalty deters criminal behavior.
Statistical Methodology: Donahue and Wolfers conduct a meta-analysis of the studies that attempt to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the death penalty. Through using this approach, they can directly assess the relevant literature on the topic, and draw their own conclusions from different disciplines and statistical analysis techniques. In sum, Donahue and Wolfers analyze the effects of the judicial experiments provided by the Furman and Gregg decisions and assess the relationship between execution and homicide rates in state panel data since 1934.
Findings: Authors found that the literature that claims “large deterrent effects based upon specific examples, functional forms, control variables, comparison groups, or IV strategies are extremely fragile and even small changes in the specifications yield dramatically different results”. In sum, this means that, in the articles that say that the death penalty does have a deterrent effect, slight manipulation to the data and/or the mode of analysis can drastically change the results of their studies. Seeing as this is the case, these findings to not hold much weight, and ought not be used to develop public policy.
What does it mean?: In sum, the work of Donahue and Wolfers sheds light on the fact that the death penalty does not deter crime. There has been some research conducted that evaluate specific datasets in given jurisdictions that attempt to claim that there is rationale behind utilizing the death penalty; however, these findings lack significant weight in their argument. If you slightly change their data, or use a slightly different statistical analysis approach, then these findings disappear. Researchers refer to this as the “statistical power” of the research. If a research article has strong power, then the findings will stay the same with slight additions or changes in the data or analysis, but if it is weak, findings change dramatically. So, in sum, this research shows that even though there are some research articles claiming that the death penalty works, their findings do not have enough power to be used to drive policy. The death penalty is an outdated practice that should not be utilized in contemporary society.
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