Death Penalty: a Deterrent Or Not Table of Contents Abstract3 CHAPTER – I: Literature Review5 CHAPTER – II: Research Methodology11 Variables11 Methods11 Type of Data Collection11 Data Analysis11 CHAPTER – III: Anticipated Conclusion12 References14 Appendix15 Abstract The death penalty, legally termed capital punishment, is the government-ordained execution of an individual who has broken a criminal law that is punishable by death. Since the earliest recordings of civilization, nearly every society has at some time justified use of capital punishment as a method to punish offenders and deter future crime.Does society have the right to punish or correct miscreants? If it does, where does that right come from? The rationale for punishment and corrections comes from the social contract.
In the same way that the social contract forms the basis for police power, it also provides a rationale for further control in the form of punishment and corrections. According to this theory, we avoid social chaos by giving the state the power to control us. In this way we protect ourselves from being victimized by others by giving up our liberty to aggress against others.If we do step outside the bounds, the state has the right to control and punish us for our transgressions. Concurrently, the state is limited in the amount of control it can exert over individuals. To be consistent with the social contract, the state should exert its power only to accomplish the purpose of protection; any further interventions in civil liberties are unwarranted.
(Scotty, 2003) Corrections pursues a mixture of goals, including retribution, reform, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation.The long-standing argument between proponents of punishment and proponents of treatment reveals a system without a clear mandate or rationale for action. Garland (1990) writes that even the state’s goal of punishment is problematic because it is marked with inconsistencies between the intent and the implementation. The moral contradictions are that it seeks to uphold freedom by means of its deprivation and it punishes private violence by inflicting state violence. (Robert, 2004) During the 1970s and 1980s, the deterrent effect of the death penalty became a favorite subject for debate in academic circles.Studies of states that had eliminated the death penalty failed to show any increase in
com/homicide-detective-essay-165/">homicide rates. Similar studies of neighboring states, in which jurisdictions retaining capital punishment were compared with those that had abandoned it, also failed to demonstrate any significant differences. Although death-penalty advocates remain numerous, few still argue for the penalty based on its deterrent effects. The purpose of this paper is to look at both sides of the arguments of the death penalty-the pros and cons, and how our criminal justice system makes legislatures, courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court chose to resolve issues.
There are evidence to both sides of the argument in whether the death penalty is a deterrent or not. (Baldus, 2009) Hypothesis 1 The death penalty deters crime. Hypothesis 2 The death penalty does not deter crime. Hypothesis 0 The death penalty has no effect on deterring crime. CHAPTER – I: Literature Review A review of the literature shows that in 1972 the US Supreme Court temporarily invalidated capital punishment statutes in Furman v. Georgia.
By 1976, however, the death penalty was reinstated in Gregg v. Georgia. The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed erratic increases in the numbers of persons executed under civil authority in the United States. Although from 1976 to 1983 only 11 prisoners were executed, this number swelled to 21 by 1984.
The annual number of executions dropped to 18 the next two years, but then rose to 25 in 1987. For the remainder of the twentieth century the number vacillated from 11 to 98, the latter figure reflecting the number of executions in 1999. Bedau, 2002) Many states today have statutory provisions that provide for a sentence of capital punishment for especially repugnant crimes (known as capital offenses). Estimates are that more than 18,800 legal executions have been carried out in the United States since 1608, when records began to be kept on capital punishment. Although capital punishment was widely used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the mid-twentieth century offered a brief respite in the number of offenders legally executed in this country.
Between 1930 and 1967, the year when the U. S.Supreme Court ordered a nationwide stay of pending executions, nearly 3,800 people were put to death. The peak years were 1935 and 1936, with nearly 200 legal killings each year. Executions declined substantially every year thereafter.
Between 1967 and 1977, a de facto moratorium existed, with no executions carried out in any U. S. jurisdiction. Following the lifting of the moratorium, executions resumed (Figure A). In 1983, only five offenders were put to death, while 37 were executed nationwide in 2008.
A modern record for executions was set in 1999, with 98 executions—35 in Texas alone. Robert, 2005) [Figure A: Court-ordered executions carried out in the United States, 1930–2008] [pic] Today, the federal government and 35 of the 50 states permit execution for first-degree murder, while treason, kidnapping, aggravated rape, the murder of a police or corrections officer, and murder while under a life sentence are punishable by death in some jurisdictions. (Kenneth, 2005) People against the death penalty as an effective deterrent state that the death sentence must be abolished as it is given on racial basis.They quote an analysis of the literature on race and capital punishment that suggests at least two conclusions. First, racial disparity in capital cases has been reduced through such Supreme Court decisions as Furman, Gregg, and Coker, although: 1. white victims continue to receive greater protection under the law than their African-American counterparts and 2.
African Americans who victimize whites are still more likely to receive death sentences than other offender-victim combinations. Second, despite the presence of racial disparity in capital cases, legally relevant variables (e. g. seriousness of the crime, prior record, etc. ) are major determinants of decisions involving the death penalty. [pic] Nationally, there have been 138 exonerations from death row since 1973.
Whereas people in favour of death penalty as an effective deterrent quote a more recent study of the federal death penalty system from 1995 to 2000. This study found no evidence of racial bias in the stage where cases are recommended for death penalty prosecution. The study, conducted by the RAND Corporation, illustrated that the death penalty was more sought after when defendants killed white victims than when defendants killed black victims.Yet, the factor that explained the disparity was the characteristics of the crime (e. g. , the heinousness of the murder, such as when a person was brutally murdered and when there was more than one victim).
(Bruce, 2008) Evidence suggests that about 90% of murders are intraracial (committed by a person of one race against a person of the same race). Since whites tend to kill whites and blacks tend to kill blacks, one possible explanation as to why whites are more often sentenced to death and executed than blacks is the race of the victims killed.According to the data, between 1976 and March 2006, 80% of all people executed in the United States killed white victims. Only 14% of people executed during these years killed blacks, 4% killed Hispanics, and 1. 9% killed someone from another race. More telling is an examination of interracial murders (murders between members of different races) since 1976.
After excluding cases involving multiple victims of several different races, the remaining 221 cases (5%) involved a white defendant and black victim in only 12 cases, versus 209 95%) cases of black defendants and white victims. Looking even farther back, a study of 15,978 executions since 1739 found only 30 cases in which a Caucasian was put to death for a crime against an African American. (Cathleen, 2003) Capital punishment remains a viable sentencing option in 38 of the states and in all federal jurisdictions, so arguments continue to rage over its value. But, a 2000 study by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and colleagues examined 4,578 death-penalty cases in state and federal courts from 1973 to 1995.They found that appellate courts overturned the conviction or reduced the sentence in 68% of the cases examined.
In 82% of the successful appeals, defendants were found to be deserving of a lesser sentence, while convictions were overturned in 7% of such appeals. (Lifton, 2000) One abolitionist claim, that the death penalty is arbitrary, is based on the belief that access to effective representation and to the courts themselves is differentially available to people with varying financial and other resources.The notion of arbitrariness also builds on beliefs that differences in jury composition, judges’ personal dispositions and backgrounds, varying laws and procedures, and jurisdictional social characteristics may lead to varying sentences and could mean that a person who might be sentenced to die in one place might receive a lesser sentence elsewhere. Access to the courts, which some see as more dependent on a changing legal environment than on fair standards of due process, is another area in which arbitrariness can play a role. In recent years, access to appellate courts has been restricted by a number of new state and federal laws.Such restrictions led the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates to cite what it called “an erosion of legal rights of death row inmates” and to urge an immediate halt to executions in the United States until the judicial process could be overhauled.
ABA delegates were expressing concerns that during the past decade, Congress and the states have unfairly limited death-row appeals through restrictive legislation. The ABA resolution also called for a halt to executions of people under 18 years of age and of those who are intellectually disabled.Abolitionists often make the complaint that only the poor get death sentences for murder. If their trials are fair, then they deserve the death penalty, but rich murderers may be equally deserving. At the moment only first-degree murder and treason are crimes deemed worthy of the death penalty.
Perhaps our concept of treason should be expanded to include those who betray the trust of the public: corporation executives who have the trust of ordinary people, but who, through selfish and dishonest practices, ruin their lives and sometimes cause suicides.Perhaps my proposal is to consider broadening, not narrowing, the scope of capital punishment, to include business personnel who unfairly harm the public-particularly the elderly. The executives in the recent corporation scandals who bailed out of sinking corporations with golden milliondollar lifeboats, while the pension plans of thousands of employees went to the bottom of the economic ocean, may deserve severe punishment, and if convicted, they should receive what they deserve. The threat of the death sentence could possibly have a deterrent effect here.Whether or not it is feasible to apply the death penalty for horrendous white-collar crimes is debatable.
But, there is something to be said in its favor. It would remove the impression that only the poor get executed. CHAPTER – II: Research Methodology The research analyzes the “Death Penalty” in details. For this study, the secondary sources will be used for analysing the study. Variables The variables for this study will be crime rate as dependent variable, and number of death sentences given as independent variable.Methods The method to be used in this study will be deductive in nature.
This is going to be a basic research. Type of Data Collection Data Collection will be based on secondary data. The secondary method has been adopted in order to get information on the past studies of death penalty being an effective deterrent or not. Data Analysis The collected will be assessed using thorough study and some use of excel or SPSS. CHAPTER – III: Anticipated ConclusionIn conclusion, it can be said that arguments for capital punishment those are likely to be identified in this literature review include revenge, “just deserts”, and the protection of society. The revenge argument builds upon the need for personal and communal closure.
The “just deserts” argument makes the straightforward claim that some people must be given death sentence for what they have done. Societal protection is couched in terms of deterrence, since those who are executed cannot commit future crimes, and execution serves as an example to other would-be criminals.Arguments against capital punishment include findings that a death sentence has been imposed on innocent people, that the capital punishment has not been found to be an useful deterrent, that it is often arbitrarily imposed, that it tends to discriminate against powerless groups and individuals, and that it is very expensive because of the numerous court appeals involved. Opponents also argue that the state should recognize the sanctity of human life. (Ehrlich, 2009) Although, the death penalty has been abolished in most countries, it remains in effect in the United States, and it remains a topic of fierce disagreement.
The classic argument for capital punishment is retributive: blood deserves blood, those who commit murder deserve to die, and justice is not done when a murderer is allowed to live. A more sophisticated argument gives capital punishment a symbolic or expressive function: Capital punishment is the strongest and most appropriate way for society to express its deep abhorrence of the most awful crimes. The argument that capital punishment is an effective deterrent of crime is perennially popular, though it can offer little empirical support for its claims.Those opposing capital punishment argue that capital punishment may have an expressive function, but that it expresses the wrong message: that killing is a solution, and that reform is impossible. They also argue that capital punishment is a cruel, unusual, and dehumanizing punishment. Among contemporary abolitionists, there are two prominent arguments: first, that capital punishment is administered in a capricious or arbitrary or racially discriminatory manner; and second, that because of many flaws in our system of justice and the honest mistakes of eyewitnesses, there is grave danger of wrongly executing the innocent.
References Baldus, David, George Woodworth, and Charles Pulaski. (2000). Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Bedau, H. A.
(Ed. ). (2009). The death penalty in America: Current controversies. New York: Oxford University Press. Bruce Bower (2008) "Teen Brains on Trial: The Science of Neural Development Tangles with the Juvenile Death Penalty," Science News, May 8,.
Cathleen Burnett (2003) "Political and Societal Views on the Death Penalty," Human Quest, March/April. Ehrlich, I. (2009). The deterrent effect of capital punishment: A question of life and death.American Economic Review vol. 65 pp.
397–417. Kenneth Jost (2005) "Death Penalty Controversies," CQ Researcher, September 23,. Lifton, Robert and Greg Mitchell. (2000).
Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions. New York: HarperCollins. Robert Grant (2004) "Capital Punishment and Violence," Humanist, January/February. Robert H. Bork (2005) "Travesty Time, Again: In Its Death-Penalty Decision, the Supreme Court Hits a New Low," National Review, March 28,.
Scotty Ballard (2003) "Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished? " Jet, February 24,. Appendix [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic]
