Studies say death penalty deters crime

I don't know why I put this in Politics section... maybe just because it does have direct connection with Politics, it might go very well in Philosophy or Debate forums...

Opinions?

I think that study is funny, but I'm not sure why. It goes against everything I think I know about murder or murderers, which granted, is not much.

I don't know what criteria has to be met in order for a murder to qualify for they death penalty and I would assume that it varies by state. I'm just assuming that the only murder that the death penalty might deter is pre-meditated. Then again people who pre-meditate such things probably have real issues and probably don't think that far ahead right?

I just don't see how it's possible to accurately analyze such a thing. I really don't think that statistics can prove that the death penalty is the difference. How can you study murders that never occurred and the intent of the murderers who never committed them?

for any punishment to be effective, a person has to fear or desperately want to avoid the punishment to the extent that it will alter their behavior to prevent the punishment.
do people fear the punishment itself or the form of the punishment? of course, some people plan and expect to go undetected.

if someone murdered my husband and in turn, i wanted to murder him so badly that i didn't care about what happened to me in court afterward, would i be afraid of a lethal injection? i honestly don't think so.
would i be afraid of something less humane? something painful, degrading and public?
i think that i just might be; i'd certainly be thinking more about the outcome of my actions and whether i thought i had to fortitude to face it, at the very least.

Aye, this one just felt wrong for me to…

Also I had to ask the questions:
If the state executes an innocent person can you still hold that their death ‘prevented’ three others?
Given how many people have managed to be released only because of new evidence, how many innocent people have been executed?
Same goes for life in prison, how many murders have been deterred because the sentence has been life behind bars?
If you fear the punishment how does that make you fear death more then dieing of old age in a cage?
Would more people be afraid of life in prison over death?

So many questions but I still feel this study went out to ‘prove’ something and so found results that would prove their stance on it. It just doesn’t feel right to me with what I understand of murder, punishment and law. For example this person is aneconomics professor… I say that again this guy is a specialist in markets! He argument is that a person will not be willing to 'pay the price' from a market point of view, he even used apples as the demonstration. Humans are not rational and what they will or won't do from a legal view is harder to pin down then an economical view...

According to the study probably yes, especially if people don't know that it was an innocent person, if people know it might reduce from the deterrent power of the punishment -- people have to know that they can't blame it on somebody else.

Probably many, but this is another discussion, the discussion here is if it's a deterrent or not, not if it's a good solution or not (slightly different issues)

Some. A lot or not that's difficult to say or guess.

Death is less preferable than living in a prison to most of the people -- not for everybody of course, not all people are the same, otherwise we wouldn't even have this discussion we'd simply execute all of the people sentenced to life in prison and we'd even be able to claim that we did them a service.

The thing about this that really bothered me is the people involved, economic majors mostly, are used to looking at rationalized numbers. Murder is anything but rational and how did they come to these numbers?

If they went out and polled some people then what they found wasn’t so much that murder was deterred by the death penalty, just that most people would not commit murder. At the very worse they found people who would imagine committing murder and come to the conclusion that they would commit murder if put into a position where they would not loose their lives doing so.

That is a far, very far, from the reality of murder. Many people, even those that can imagine themselves committing murder, are incapable of doing it when put into the position to. The military trains troops to such an extent to just get them to overcome the interesting block that exists in the human mind when it comes to killing each other. Also when you are in a position to commit murder the last thing on your mind is the punishment. Most murders not being pre-meditated after all and those that are the plans consist of covering your tracks not to get caught.

On top of this they are trying to create a number where one doesn’t exist. While on paper you can write a negative in reality it is not possible to have a negative. In this case they are trying to prove that murders didn’t happen all because of the death penalty. This is impossible as you don’t have the means to count murders that didn’t happen, seeing they would be a ‘negative.’ The only argument they can give is the murder rate would be higher without the death penalty and without any way to see into an alternative reality where the only thing that has changed is the death penalty we can never tell. There is no real way to -*test*-('") such an argument.

If we focus on the amount of murder, which has too many complex factors to really be accurate focusing on one or two, to the death penalty we find the rate of murder in the US staggering high. It seems to me that the death penalty isn’t at all stopping the tens of thousands of murders each year with those numbers. Other nations don’t have this rate of murder, even ones without the death penalty, which undercuts these studies quite well actually.

The people who did these studies where obviously focusing on only two of these factors, the death penalty and murder rates. They do so from the perspective that the death penalty isn’t being used enough and that the safeties that are in place to prevent injustices are too restrictive. Not surprising they would put forth a report that can’t be truly -*test*-('")ed in reality that supports their original argument.

1. I don't favor death penalty, but I think somebody can make studies about that and I still think they are interesting no matter what they show.

2. the scientific methodology is more complex than you try to imagine and doesn't involve polling, however since there's no way possible to say what would have happened if something would or wouldn't have happened unless you have a strictly controlled environment these studies have no absolute value. (let me explain this some things have clear cause-effect link, if I depress a trigger the gun will shoot, if you noticed that the gun shot you can deduce that it is most likely that it wouldn't have shot if I didn't depress the trigger however that's not 100% sure and that's a pretty much a deterministic system, if we talk about humans there's not deterministic model of behavior, however economists can very well prove that there's a clear link between price and demand and can assign values and predict what the demand will be for a specific price -- this is only one example that show how some non-deterministic system can be quantified, it's not necessarily the methodology used in this case, of course there are product that are no price sensitive (there are different types of price elasticity -- I mention this only to avoid being nitpicked about my example, my example was only to show how economists can make predictions) If economists can make prediction about future unknown behavior they can make predictions in the past (what would have happened) too, of course there's nothing 100% sure. As for methodology they probably compared murder rates in a statistical way comparing what happened when death penalty was introduced or removed, probably compared with similar situations (neighboring places with similar conditions where death penalty status was not changed in that period).

Don't think they compared apples with oranges (like you do by comparing death rates from different countries) BTW, even if murder rate is low in other countries there's not reason to argue that would not decrease if the death penalty would be introduced (it's about change, not absolute level) it also doesn't matter that you can reduce the murder rate to 0, I'm sure that's an effect that decreases (it's not a linear relation between death sentences and murder rates as some might interpret from somewhat badly written article)

I don't know those people, do you? Why don't you think that some scientists can research an issue and then publish the result no matter what the research result is or if they like it or not? Do you have any special info to assume some bias? Also, notice that I didn't even discuss in this thread if death penalty is good or bad (I believe there shouldn't be a death penalty) but rather the research that it might reduce crime rate. For example even if it's clear that death penalty reduces the murder rate some people might have principles that go against the death penalty (for example there's one of the commandment "Do not kill" it doesn't say like in Animals' Farm "Do not kill without reason" or "Do not kill unless it's a good idea" )

There are too many factors in murder, and more so in the ‘absence of murder’ to be able to do a study that can actually prove or disprove the relationship to the death-penalty. Even looking at statistics we can’t isolate a single cause and hold it up as the sole factor in every case. That is why I was bringing forth other nations, as if it was the sole most important factor it would be so regardless of location.

Also I say take a look at the people who did these studies, economic professors in many cases. These people are trained in dealing with rational numbers but we are talking an action that is completely irrational in all but a very few cases. Even these few cases the murders are rationalized it isn’t likely that the punishment will be a deterrent. Such as Hitler’s belief that he was purifying the gene pool by removing undesirables or religious extremists who kill in the name of whatever god they worship. It is probably more terrifying as those carrying out rationalized murders tend to view themselves as the good guys and even willing to die!

While logically we can argue that the ‘price’ of murder can be made too high then people will stop paying the price reality is messier then that. As it isn’t rational the highest price we charge, life, isn’t going to stop people from committing murders. As I said before the punishment for your crime is not something you are thinking on in the heat of the moment, and if you’re plotting murder then you’re already planning not to get caught.

Murder can not easily be rationed using numbers alone. I would pay these studies more heed if they where being produced by psychiatrists or people who majored in law. These two groups are routinely exposed to the irrational behaviours of humans, one by their profession and the other association when these irrational thoughts lead to violations of the law.

Again we end up with them arguing that for every state condoned murder we have somehow prevented X number of other murders. This can not be verified but that hasn't stopped them from calling for the time between conviction and execution to be slashed and the death penalty to be more widely adopted. I think it was that action which made me label the people carrying out these reports as pro-death. The call to reduce the few safeguards in place to try and prevent innocent executions bothers me…

Hmm, I like how you declare something "irrational" without knowing anything about it, do you have any data to base your conclusion upon? It is known that there are factors that influenced crime/murder rate: education, income, etc why don't you thing that there would be another factor "deterrent" that would influence it? Do you have any prove that "deterrent doesn't work"? If that's true then maybe we can have a society without any punishment, that would be interesting.

So you mean that there's absolutely no connection between the punishment and the likelihood to commit a crime (since nobody plans to be caught)? I think this is false on many levels. For example if I want to steal something I think if I have a small chance to spend 10 years in prison or if I have a chance to spend 10 days, if the chance is to spend 10 days me as a criminal I might take that chance without a second thought.

Let me quote this since you assume bias among the scientists:

The human mind has never been rational; I know that from experience as one! It is for this reason that the secrets of thought is something we can’t comprehend and one of the longest philosophical questions around. It is for this reason that we don’t function like computers running everything on logic and numbers as opposed to emotions, ‘gut feelings’ and memories.

It isn’t that I am trying to say that is not is a factor called deterrent, all I said is studies like this tend to focus on this as if it is the silver bullet of crime and that is an error in itself regardless of how you question it. Nor have I said about deterrents overall not working, I just don’t see how the death penalty is more effective then life in prison without the hope of release would be.

Murder is a bit different then just theft. One has to overcome a wider range of emotions and interesting memes in the human mind that turn us away from murder. A few, and I think a very small few, might be deterred by any significant penalty and that isn’t just the death penalty. Those who carry out such actions are already capable of overcoming far worse punishments then what we can push on them, their own minds.

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t punish them further either, a person who can overcome their own mind and able to commit murder is a danger to society. Which is interesting as prison was designed around keeping people isolated from society till they where no longer a threat… it is depressing that the law systems seems to have forgotten this fact.

Neither you nor I will have the chance to ‘-*test*-('")’ this ourselves, if life is kind to us anyway, so it isn’t something easily proved or disproved. If you ever find yourself in a position to take a human life I doubt the punishment for doing so will be any more pressure then what your mind will bring on you in those long drawn out moments. It takes a massive emotional surge, ‘malfunction’ or conditioning to overcome that.

A slightly off topic example seeing you brought up theft…

You said you might be willing to steal something if you where only faced with ten days punishment. Well I must put forth this hyperthetical question:

There is a child and it is obvious this child comes from a poor background by the clothing he wears and is probably homeless as well. In this child’s hand is a loaf of breed, probably found some money somewhere to afford to eat. Now you know there is no punishment for thief in this scenario at all, no law based deterrent what so ever.

So do you steal the bread?

Interesting that you try to find a rationale for something that you say it's never rational.

As I show you in my example is perfectly possible to predict "irrational" behavior of people... I mean there are strange things like: men become more risk seekers if they see a picture of a pretty woman -- it's not rational to pay more for a product or to bet higher at roulette but that's what happens and this can be predicted even if it's not rational.

You also start from the wrong premise that people who commit murders are completely insane. I can see myself killing somebody who gravely mistreated me (see the terrorism thread) if I only get life in prison, I might think twice if I can be executed, for you those are similar or even worse to live the whole life in prison, for me is not that way, and since I see such strong attitudes against the death penalty I assume that's the same for many other people (and probably for you too -- otherwise please explain: why you fight against death penalty when life in prison is worse? wouldn't be more merciful to just execute the people convicted to life in prison?)

So you are asking about morality issues here... that's something different, it depends on the conditions, if I die of hunger I might consider it -- people who die of hunger are not always very moral.... but this has no bearing to punishment this is purely "would you do something "bad" if you know you can't be caught" kind of question. It depends if I perceive that as "bad" or if I don't care if it's "bad".

Ok, I was watching a movie about a politician who opposes death penalty and I instantly got a negative feeling about the guy although if I were to vote "yes" or "no" I would surely vote against the death penalty... and that made me think a little bit about my reasons in debating seemingly for the death penalty (now, and it happened a while before)... so why I do that?! Why the contradiction between my behavior and my opinions?

It seems to me that I don't like it when people who are convinced of something (and in this case they have almost a religious convictions) and they think it's a Great thing and they care a lot about it they become irrational and support ideas that don't stand to any basic logical -*test*-('")... so I realize that what actually bothers me is not the actual idea that people promote its how they promote it and especially the religious way of doing it -- and by "religious" way of doing I don't mean that's based on some holy books, because I totally accept the argument: "It's against the FIRST commandment", but I don't like when people become closed to other ideas if they have a chance to be against what they set their minds that is an important and sacred issue.

My position would be more like: even if death penalty is a deterrent I am still against it because it cheapens life and it's something irreversible and I'm usually against irreversible things, it's also against religious percepts (that I don't adhere to, but most of the people do, and since I don't like hypocrisy, I feel the need to hold people accountable for their percepts: "hey, it's the first rule in YOUR book!") I have other reasons too... however I have the audacity to think that I have an open mind and I can take in any research that shows that death penalty is good.... or bad... so I would dare say I don't have a religious view about the issue, somehow because of this I tend to look with a kind of instinctive distrust (and maybe superiority -- shame on me) towards people who argue about the issue and don't seem to be open to other ideas that don't support their imaginary world constructed to defend the "sacred" issue. This explains pretty well why I find myself debating against my choices, not once, but twice... it's because this issue is very likely to be treated in a religious way by most of the people....

P.S. This reminds me, have you seen "The Life of David Gale"? I actually liked the movie...

i understand what you mean... i feel ambivalent about capital punishment. i think it can be a deterrent, but i don't really approve of it; taking a life is serious business and i think there's a lot to consider about the morality of it all. sometimes i feel like i might have two opinions going on.

i feel torn: i don't like the idea of taxpayers footing the bill for people to be incarcerated with lifelong terms. i don't like the idea that there could be a chance that someone given a death sentence could actually be innocent and it is irreversible.
i wonder if we should look, as a society, at whether incarceration (rather than fixating on capital punishment) is the problem because of the way it is currently carried out.
it seems like it requires a person to choose their stance:
a.) throw an offender in a cage and curtail personal liberties.
b.) decide that an offender has no right to life and then destroy them.

because that's what it really boils down to: a. or b.
and personally, i'm not comfortable with either. the first choice seems too lenient (someone losing their liberties isn't equivalent to a victim's loss of life) and the second choice is irrevocable. i keep telling myself that there has to be a better way to seek justice, but what it might be...i don't know.

p.s. no, i haven't seen the movie. are you recommending it?

I am for people who demonstrated that they can't live in a society (third strike rule or whatever way to determine that) to be baned from the society and forced to live in a world without rules (or rules they make for themselves) without advanced technology and without the benefits of the society... sorry Dragon, but I think we need a new Australia for that... or a chunk of American Mid West dedicated for that (with 4 meter hight fences guarded by robotic weapons, built on top of hard rock so they can't tunnel through and with a no fly area above)

As for the movie, I don't know your taste, some people didn't like it at all, but it's with Kevin Spacey -- that makes it automatically good in my view