by Frank Jarolimek-Proner

Created on: November 20, 2007

Introduction
The idea that capital punishment is a deterrent is central to the debate over the death penalty and is underpinned by the common sense notion that what is feared the most deters the most. What flows from this assertion is the idea that since death is what is most feared by people, the death penalty must be the greatest deterrent.

Much of the support for the death penalty rests on this putative attribute of capital punishment as an effective general deterrent against the most violent crimes. It is a major factor in political endorsements of the death penalty. New York's governor, George Pataki, made brining back the death penalty a cornerstone of his policy on crime as a necessary tool to fight and deter crime. In the 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush, an enthusiastic supporter of the death penalty who oversaw 152 executions in his six years as governor of Texas declared that "the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives" and that "it's the only reason to be for it." The governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, recently confirmed this sentiment when on June 4, 2007 he issued a statement assuring that "capital punishment is a vital deterrent to the most serious of crimes."

While these claims may accord with common sense, it has proven elusive in proving scientifically. Determining scientifically sound etiological correlations between executions and homicide rates is probably impossible given the paucity of available data. A handful of social scientists have, nevertheless, continued to pour over the data using sophisticated econometrics and statistical devices claiming to discern a variety of deterrent scenarios. Despite all these efforts, the data does not seem to reveal any significant or sound deterrent effect. The obdurate support for capital punishment is therefore perhaps more indicative of deeply held convictions than a reflection of sound penal policy.

The Science of a New Deterrence'
As long as death is worse than imprisonment, the risk of death, no matter how much smaller than the risk of imprisonment, adds to the reasons against committing a crime. According to this hypothesis the penalty of death will always have a marginal effect of decreasing the murder rate above and beyond what could be achieved by lesser punishments such as imprisonment or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP).

This modern scientific analysis of crime deterrence, underpinned by rational choice theory, was ushered

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