Associated Press reporter Robert Tanner writes an article today stating that evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the death penalty reduces crime. As with most media coverage of controversial issues, there is a paragraph or two in which the other side makes its case. In this instance, the lone voice arguing against the efficacy of the death penalty is Justin Wolfers, a professor at Wharton who just can’t seem to keep his name out of our blog. Tanner does his best to make Wolfers look bad, quoting him as dismissing these studies because they appear in “second-tier journals.”
Given the evidence I’ve examined, I believe that Wolfers is on the right side of this debate. There are recent studies of the death penalty — most bad, but some reasonable — that find it has a deterrent effect on crime. Wolfers and John Donohue published an article in the Stanford Law Review two years ago that decimated most of the research on the subject.
Analyses of data stretching farther back in time, when there were many more executions and thus more opportunities to test the hypothesis, are far less charitable to death penalty advocates. On top of that, as we wrote in Freakonomics, if you do back-of-the-envelope calculations, it becomes clear that no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention. As such, economists who argue that the death penalty works are put in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that criminals are irrationally overreacting when they are deterred by it.
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who cares?
how much does it cost to keep a murderer in prison for a lifetime? who pays that bill?
a good murderer is a dead murderer.
who cares?
how much does it cost to keep a murderer in prison for a lifetime? who pays that bill?
a good murderer is a dead murderer.
I have read the Freakonomics work and find it much more convincing the the AP article. However, as a layperson, I didn’t find the AP article to be biased.
I wish the article had quoted the statistics for global use of the death penalty, or pointed out that few countries outside of the United States allow executions of those under 21 years old.
From:UN Chronicle, http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2004/webArticles/072604_CapitalPunishment.asp
“Of all known executions in 2003, 84 per cent took place in four countries: at least 726 people in China, 108 in Iran, 65 in the United States and 64 in Viet Nam. However, Amnesty International believes the figure for China to be much higher.”
I have read the Freakonomics work and find it much more convincing the the AP article. However, as a layperson, I didn’t find the AP article to be biased.
I wish the article had quoted the statistics for global use of the death penalty, or pointed out that few countries outside of the United States allow executions of those under 21 years old.
From:UN Chronicle, http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2004/webArticles/072604_CapitalPunishment.asp
“Of all known executions in 2003, 84 per cent took place in four countries: at least 726 people in China, 108 in Iran, 65 in the United States and 64 in Viet Nam. However, Amnesty International believes the figure for China to be much higher.”
budda:
You don’t need a PhD to do that math. The death penalty, regardless of deterrent value, reduces crime, specifically it eliminates repeat offense in the specific cases in which its applied.
It doesn’t reduce crime if the criminal is otherwise sentenced to life in prison with no parole. At least in this context, I think we’re only considering crimes that are perpetrated outside a prison.
cbraga:
a good murderer is a dead murderer.
Maybe, maybe not, but this assumes that the system is 100% accurate with convictions. As many different studies have shown, this is not the case. Which is worse- not killing a murderer, or killing an innocent?
budda:
You don’t need a PhD to do that math. The death penalty, regardless of deterrent value, reduces crime, specifically it eliminates repeat offense in the specific cases in which its applied.
It doesn’t reduce crime if the criminal is otherwise sentenced to life in prison with no parole. At least in this context, I think we’re only considering crimes that are perpetrated outside a prison.
cbraga:
a good murderer is a dead murderer.
Maybe, maybe not, but this assumes that the system is 100% accurate with convictions. As many different studies have shown, this is not the case. Which is worse- not killing a murderer, or killing an innocent?
#2 TheBigDuck:
Did she steal the icecream at the end ?
#2 TheBigDuck:
Did she steal the icecream at the end ?