Is the Death Penalty Effective in Preventing Serious Crimes

Other than retribution - justly deserved penalty, deterrence is one of the most prominent argument that people cite when they support death penalty. It is no doubt one of the most debated issues of the society today. While those in support of death penalty argue that it deters others from resorting to similar crimes, those who oppose it are of the opinion that it is not as effective it is promoted to be. With both sides adamant on their respective stands, the layman is left confused about effectiveness of this practice in prevention of serious crimes. Other than the option for an evaluation of death penalty pros and cons on the logical front, one should also go through death penalty statistics and compare these figures with crime rates to get to the root of the issue.

Death Penalty: An Overview

Death penalty or capital punishment revolves around the concept of general deterrence - wherein a person convicted for a particular crime is sentenced to death to send across the message that such criminal acts will not be tolerated in the society. It works on the simple principle that people refrain from doing a particular deed when they know that they will have to pay a high price for the same. As of today, 139 countries have outlawed this practice (a fact which is widely used by abolitionists to highlight the fact that it is ineffective when it comes to crime prevention). More recent death penalty statistics reveal that only 18 countries executed such a penalty as a part of legal proceedings in 2009. In 2010, 46 convicts were executed in the United States - of which 44 were executed by lethal injection and 1 each were executed by firing squad and electric chair respectively. The general opinion seems to be in favor of death penalty - at least in case of homicide, with as many as 64 percent of Gallup Poll respondents voting in favor of this concept in 2010.

Is the Death Penalty an Effective Crime Deterrent?

Basically, death penalty is based on the belief that the threat of death makes prospective criminals think twice before resorting to some criminal act - such as murder, and makes them totally give up on such crimes. Even though the effectiveness of death penalty as a crime deterrent has been used to garner support for this concept for quite some time now, whether it really deters people from resorting to crime is an issue of contention. A study published in the 'Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology' revealed that 88 percent of American criminologists believed that death penalty was not an effective crime deterrent. In fact, approximately 87 percent of the respondents of this study were of the opinion that abolition of death penalty would have no major impact on crime rates in the country as such.

On the contrary, several criminologists are of the opinion that the deterrent effect of punishment in itself is one of the several factors which makes a person indulge in crime, and doing away with it can help us bring down the crime rate by a significant extent. The example of Canada wherein the homicide rate declined after abolition of death penalty in 1976 is often used by these people to support their opinion. One has to also give a thought to the fact that those criminals who resort to a great deal of planning to commit some crime will never get affected by the threat of being caught and convicted. Similar would be the case when it comes to crimes by mentally affected people or children for whom death penalty will seldom act as a deterrent.

Again the time frame between the sentencing of convict and his actual execution is quite lengthy - at times spanning a decade or even more. By the time this execution is carried out, only a few people (mostly the victim's and criminal's family members) keep a track of the trial. As time elapses the deterrence effect of sentencing a person to death starts decreasing. Even those in support of death penalty agree with this fact, and argue that the legal fraternity should speed up such trials and execute the convict at the earliest so that the deterrence effect as a consequence of death penalty is maximum. But then, speedy trials would again mean more chances of an innocent person being sent to the gallows, and that is something which we can't afford to do.

There do exist studies which speak in support of the death penalty as a crime deterrent. For instance, a nationwide study which was carried out by a group of professors at Emory University in 2003 revealed that eighteen lives are saved for every convict sentenced to death. More of such studies - some of which put the number of lives saved at 3 and others at 20+ also exist. The critics though, seem to be least impressed by these figures. While some of them are of the opinion that these studies are inconclusive, others out-rightly dismissing them saying that the methodology adopted in them is inappropriate. Those who suggest that death penalty should be abolished also point to the fact that the crime rate in those states which have abolished death penalty over the last few decades hasn't increased dramatically as those in support of this practice often suggest.

While many people claim that had there been no provisions of death penalty in our legal system, the crime rate would have been even higher than what it is today. However, there is very little statistical data to prove that death penalty is effective in preventing serious crimes. Basically, it is impossible to determine how many murders could have been prevented or how many people have been killed because of presence or absence of death penalty legislation. If we go by numbers, we have no option but to believe that death penalty is not as efficient a 'tool of crime deterrence' as it is believed to be. At the same time however, we can't ignore the fact that without the fear of being sentenced to death - the instances of people resorting to murder would have been at least a bit higher than what it is at present.