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Facts Back Up Death Penalty's Effectiveness
By JOHN R. LOTT JR. | Posted Wednesday, December 19, 2007 4:30 PM PT
New Jersey on Monday became the first state to end the death penalty since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. Yet despite all the media attention this is generating, New Jersey, with about 428 murders in 2006, has never used the death penalty since it was reinstituted.
Too bad, because research indicates that it would have saved lives.
A Quinnipiac University poll released this month found that by an overwhelming 78% to 18%, New Jersey voters want the death penalty at least for cases involving serial and child killers.
The most recent Gallup poll shows that 69% of Americans favor the death penalty. Yet opponents continue to force a widespread public debate over its effectiveness.
Too Rare A Deterrent?
A common claim is that executions — down to about 53 in 2006 from 90 in 1999 — are too rare even in other parts of the country to deter criminals. To see the spuriousness of this complaint, consider that "only" about 55 police officers are killed each year — yet we (academics and the public alike) still see it as a dangerous job, the stresses of which help account for higher divorce and suicide rates.
Yet those killings are spread across about 700,000 U.S. police officers. By contrast, 53 executions resulted from 16,700 murders. In other words, we executed murderers at 40 times the rate at which criminals killed police officers.
Given the impact on police, how can we believe that murderers would be unaffected by the much larger risk they face?
Critics also point to mistaken convictions, but they still can't point to a single case in which an innocent person was executed. This is ultimate proof that our justice system works well — making due account, for example, for the fact that witnesses sometimes make misidentifications.
Others, such as the American Bar Association, claim racial biases in how the death penalty is applied. In fact, while African-Americans have committed 53% of all murders since 1980 in which the killer's race is known, they have accounted for only 38% of the executions.
The campaign against the death penalty also gives us such spurious studies as a much-publicized look by the New York Times that compared murder rates in 1998 in states with and without the death penalty.
The Times concluded that capital punishment was ineffective in reducing crime, noting that "10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average . . . while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average."
In fact, the 12 states without the death penalty have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates unrelated to capital punishment. When the death penalty was suspended nationwide from 1968 to 1976, the murder rate in these states was still lower than in most others.
Murder Drops As Penalty Returns
What's much more important is that the states that reinstituted the death penalty after 1976 collectively saw a significantly bigger drop in murder rates (about 38% larger than in the 12 no-execution states) by 1998. Without executions, murder rates skyrocketed from 1968 to 1976.
Studies that sought to pin the '70s rise in violent crime to other factors were generally inconclusive.
Studies of the period since the death penalty's return have shown its effectiveness. Generally, studies over the past decade that examined how the murder rate in each state changed as the states changed their execution rates found that each execution saved the lives of about 15 to 18 potential murder victims.
About 75% of studies by economists find that more executions reduce murder. Overall, the rise in executions during the '90s accounts for about 12% to 14% of the overall drop in murders.
New Jersey politicians may feel better this week, but there's a real cost in terms of lost lives.
Lott is the author of "Freedomnomics" and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.
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