News and Developments 2008: Deterrence

Number of Police Officers Killed by Gunfire is Lowest in 50 Years

Posted: December 31, 2008
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The number of police officers killed by gunfire in 2008 dropped by 40% from 2007, down to its lowest level in more than 50 years, according to a report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.  The report attributed the decline to a new emphasis on officer safety training and equipment.   In addition to increased training, more officers are wearing body armor and using stun guns to protect themselves. The overall number of officers killed in the line of duty also declined in 2008.

STUDIES: Higher Murder Rates Related to Gun Laws

Posted: December 05, 2008
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States with softer gun laws have higher rates of handgun killings, fatal shootings of police officers, and sales of weapons that were used in crimes in other states, according to a study due out in January 2009. The study’s 38-page report, underwritten by a group of over 300 mayors and obtained by the Washington Post, focused on tracking guns used in crimes back to the retailers that first sold them.

Based on an analysis of annual crime-gun data compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the study found:

 

Gap Between the Murder Rate of Death Penalty States and Non-Death Penalty States Remains Large

Posted: November 26, 2008
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States with the death penalty have consistently had higher murder rates than states without the death penalty.  If the death penalty was acting as a deterrent to murder, one might expect that the gap between these two groups would lessen over a long period of time as states using the death penalty obtained an advantage in reducing murders.  However, the gap has grown larger over the past 18 years. In 2007, states with the death penalty had a 42% higher murder rate than states without the death penalty.  In 1990, the gap was only 4%.

NEW VOICES: Former San Quentin Warden Says Death Penalty "Detracts crucial resources from programs that could truly make our communities safe"

Posted: October 02, 2008
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The former warden of San Quentin prison in California, Jeanne Woodford, regrets having taken part in executions and has called for replacing the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Woodford notes that after each execution, "someone on the staff would ask, 'Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?' We knew the answer: No." The full article can be found below.

 

 

Murder Rate Declines in Every Region Except the South, Where Executions Are Most Prevalent

Posted: September 16, 2008
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According to the F.B.I.'s latest crime report released on September 15, the South is the only region in the country that experienced a rise in its murder rate in 2007. The FBI reported that the murder rate in the country declined to 5.6 murders per 100,000 people in 2007 from 5.7 in 2006, and the rate declined in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West. In the South, however, the murder rate increased from 6.8 in 2006 to 7.0 in 2007, the highest rate among the four regions. The South consistently has had the highest murder rate among the four regions.

Experts from Both Sides Say Data Does Not Support a Deterrent Effect from the Death Penalty

Posted: July 02, 2008
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Legal scholar Cass Sunstein and researcher Justin Wolfers recently joined in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s citation of their work in Baze v. Rees, the decision that approved lethal injection and opened the way to recent executions. Justice Stevens had cited Wolfer’s research as evidence of the lack of deterrence of the death penalty while Justice Scalia cited Sunstein’s writings indicating a “a significant body of recent evidence that capital punishment may well have a deterrent effect, possibly a quite powerful one.” Both Sunstein and Wolfers say the Justices “misread the evidence” to “support their competing conclusions on the legal issue.” They explained the nuances of the evidence on deterrence and the death penalty and how no study on the topic can support a strong conclusion. “The best we can say is that homicide rates are not closely associated with capital punishment.” They added, “In short, the best reading of the accumulated data is that they do not establish a deterrent effect of the death penalty.”

FBI Report: Murder Rate Falls 2.7% Nationally, But Rises in the South

Posted: June 12, 2008
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The country's murder rate declined 2.7% in 2007. The rate dropped the most in the Northeast, and declined in the Midwest and the West, but increased in the South. According to the preliminary Uniform Crime Report published by the FBI, violent crime declined generally by 1.4 percent in 2007 in the U.S. “This report suggests that violent crime is decreasing and remains near historic low levels,” said Peter Carr, Principal Deputy Director of Public Affairs for the Justice Department. (T. Frieden, "FBI: Violent crime down 1.4 percent in 2007", CNN, June 9, 2008).

The overall drop in the murder rate came during the year when the U.S. had the lowest number of executions (42) in 13 years. Almost all the executions (86%) occurred in the South, which was the only region with a rise in its murder rate (+2.9%). The Northeast had no executions in 2007, and it had the largest decrease in its murder rate (-8.6%) among regions in the country. The Northeast continues to have the lowest murder rate in the country and the lowest number of executions of the four regions. See Deterrence.

NEW RESOURCES: Study Finds Homicide Rates Unrelated to Execution Rates

Posted: April 14, 2008
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The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently completed a study of the effect of executions on homicide rates and found that both states that execute many people and states that execute no one show the biggest decline in homicides (34% and 36% declines, respectively). States that execute few people have the least decline (24%) in homicides. According to the study, “This peculiar result suggests the death penalty is irrelevant to homicide.” The study looked at the effect of the 1,051 legal executions on the 446,457 homicides in the 50 states and D.C. during the 1984-2006 period.

If there were a true deterrent effect, the CJCJ argues, then even the states that execute a few people would have a stronger decline in homicides than those that execute no one. Instead, the data shows that the homicide rates in states such as Texas, which leads the nation in executions, and in non-execution states such as New York, show the biggest declines. This pattern, “strongly argue[s] death penalty and homicide rates are unrelated."