Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?
Are States Safer When They Keep the Death Penalty?
Jackie Phillips
Criminology, Post University
CRJ355 Research Methods in Criminal Justice
Unit 8 Assignment: Research Project Reflection
Dr. Lyndon Godsall
Due Friday, June 23, 2023
Over the course of the term, you have had a chance to share your ideas with others and receive feedback as your research project took shape. Reflecting on your experience, feedback received, and your exploration of ideas leading to the submission of your research project, you will conclude your course experience with a reflection about your experience. Your paper will communicate about your experience with respect to each area noted above and share how your experience challenged and supported your learning about creating a Criminal Justice Research Project. You may use first person for this assignment.
For this assignment you will submit a reflection piece.
Your submission will be in the form of a two page paper in which you will respond to the following:
Identify and share your perspectives concerning one area or aspect of your work developing your Criminal Research Project that you found most challenging.
https://www.jotform.com/report/23163659701205213
I found working with this JotForm the most challenging because I was not familiar with
the software at all since I had never used it before. However, I am familiar with spreadsheets, so I tried to use my knowledge of spreadsheets to create this form that has data about a large variety of Death Row prisoners, both past and present. I also had a difficult time trying to decide what information to include and what was important for the accurate description of each prisoner. There was a huge wealth of information on each prisoner, and I had a hard time deciding which to use with the very limited page space. Once I developed the form, I found myself wanting to find more and more prisoners to enter, and luckily, I did find a huge supply of information on the wide variety of Death Row prisoners. The difficulty was picking and choosing which to use. I tried to use people who had a variety to offer with their data and timeframe and outcome.
Identify and share your perspectives concerning one area or aspect of your work in developing your Criminal Research Project that you found the easiest.
The primary focus of my paper in the beginning was to determine if the Death Penalty is a deterrence to crime. Does crime noticeably reduce when a state has a Death Penalty? I found a lot of information that does support that crime does not reduce if the Death Penalty is a sentencing option. Here is one resource that I found:
“Deterrence should not be considered in a vacuum. The critical question is not whether potential criminals will be dissuaded from killing because they would face the death penalty rather than no punishment at all. Other punishments such as life without parole might provide equal deterrence at far less costs and without the attendant risk of executing an innocent person. Whether the death penalty is a proven method of lowering the murder rate has been subjected to many studies over many decades. It is not enough to compare jurisdictions with the death penalty to those without unless the study controls for the many other variables that could affect the murder rate. For example, lower unemployment rates correlate with lower crime rates. More police involvement in the local community seems to reduce crime. The death penalty affects only a tiny percentage of even those who commit murder. Its effect is very difficult to pinpoint, and the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that past studies have neither proven nor disproven a deterrent effect.” #1 (No Author Given, 2023)
Here is another article by an independent group in North Carolina who states that the Death Penalty does not deter crime:
“Our close work with death-sentenced people, as well as families who have lost loved ones to violence, confirms that there are more effective ways to prevent murder. The vast majority of those on death row committed unplanned crimes arising out of mental illness, poverty, substance abuse, and trauma. Societal efforts to remedy those problems, along with the racial inequities that underlie them, would have a far greater impact on public safety. Many surviving family members also say the death penalty fails to bring them healing, and they ask that the state not kill in the names of their loved ones. Practices like restorative justice are designed to address harm and bring healing, rather than focusing on retribution.” #2 (No Author Given, February 2022)
Identify one major personal “takeaway” or learning outcome that you found most valuable in developing a Criminal Research Project.
I was disturbed by this article that specifically addresses the innocence of convicted people on Death Row:
“The great majority of innocent people who are sentenced to death are never identified and freed, says Professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan Law School, the study’s lead author. The difficulty in identifying innocent inmates stems from the fact that more than 60 percent of prisoners in death penalty cases ultimately are removed from death row and resentenced to life imprisonment. Once that happens, their cases no longer receive the exhaustive reviews that the legal system provides for those on death row… The research produced an estimate of the percentage of defendants who would be exonerated if they all remained indefinitely on death row, where their cases would be subject to intense scrutiny for innocence… The study concluded that the number of innocent defendants who have been put to death is “comparatively low. … Our data and the experience of practitioners in the field both indicate that the criminal justice system goes too far greater lengths to avoid executing innocent defendants than to prevent them from remaining in prison indefinitely.” #3 (Hannon, Elliot, 2014)
References
#1, No Author Given, 2023, “Deterrence: Studies show no link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates.” Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/deterrence
#2, No Author Given, February 2022, “Why End the Death Penalty? The Death Penalty Does Not Keep Us Safe,” North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, https://nccadp.org/reasons-to-end-the-death-penalty/failure-to-deter-crime/
#3, Hannon, Elliot, 2014, “Big Data Study: 1 in 25 Given Death Penalty Sentence Are Likely Innocent,” Slate.com Magazine, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/a-new-study-estimates-error-rate-of-death-penalty-sentences-in-u-s.html
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