The Short-Term Deterrent Effect of Execution on Homicides in the United States, 1979-1998

• Other Authors: Hong, Moonki (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Criminology; Sociology
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_2016SP_Hong_fsu_0071E_13206

While a very few death penalty studies find that the death penalty has the deterrent effect on homicides, the majority of the studies do not find. These contrasting and inconclusive findings raise an important question as to why the death penalty has little or no deterrent effect on homicides. As Phillips and Hensley (1984) pointed out, failure to find solid evidence of the deterrent effect may occur for one of two reasons: (1) either a deterrent effect can theoretically exist, but it does not actually exist, or (2) the methods used to find the deterrent effect are not sophisticated enough to reveal it. Theoretically, the deterrent effect of the death penalty could be achieved quickly and last only for a very short period of time (Andenaes, 1952; Phillips and Hensley, 1984). It is plausible that the deterrent effects of executions become strongest when the number of newspaper and television coverage of execution reaches its peak one day before and after an execution. However, as several researchers have repeatedly suggested that most of the past studies have employed annual and monthly homicide data (Donohue and Wolfers, 2005; Hjalmarsson, 2009; Katz, Levitt, and Shustorovich, 2003). In short, the main methodological limitation of the previous studies is that use of annually aggregated crime data may miss any deterrent effect in studies of the death penalty on homicides that are short-lived, that the number of killings deterred is too small to be detected excessively long temporal units such as years or months. The primary goals of this research were (1) to test whether an execution reduce murders on given day in the given state, (2) to assess whether an publicized execution has a deterrent effect on homicides on the given day in the given state, and (3) to determine whether the results of the analyses 1 and 2 remain consistent with temporal, regional, demographic and non-capital punishment variations. Data are collected from the Mortality Detail Files including the exact dates of homicides from January 1, 1979 through December 31, 2006. This study reveals a statistically significant deterrent effect of executions on homicides on the day of an execution. Some remote significant deterrent effects of execution on the days 5 and 6 afterward could not be interpreted as genuine deterrent effects because this pattern of the deterrent effects has nothing to do with the patterns of newspaper and television coverage of executions. However, this study find no evidence indicative of the deterrent effects of publicized execution on homicides. In addition, this study finds no evidence of a brutalization effect of executions on homicides. In summary, the evidence suggests that executions do cause the homicide rates to drop, but only to a very small degree. It appears that, in the aggregate, the small number of executions carried out in a typical year in the United States has very little impact on the recent declines in the number of homicides. The robustness tests confirm the earlier findings, leading to the overall conclusion that executions do affect the behavior of prospective killers, but only for a very brief period of time in a modest way. === A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Spring Semester 2016. === April 14, 2016. === death penalty, deterrence, execution, homicide === Includes bibliographical references. === Gary D. Kleck, Professor Directing Dissertation; David W. Rasmussen, University Representative; William D. Bales, Committee Member; Theodore G. Chiricos, Committee Member.