Resolved: The United States Should Abolish the Death Penalty

Aight dawg lets do this. C1) Deterrence Pretty obvious that I would argue this. I always do. Economists have spearheaded the recent death penalty research, and are playing an increasing role in the debate. Deterrence has been applied to other punishments and has shown to produce a significant effect on criminal behavior. Deterrence theory, also termed ‘Rational Choice Theory’, has its beginnings in 1968 with the work of Gary Becker. Although many criticized his work, he claimed that criminals are rational. They, like law abiding citizens, respond to costs and benefits. People consume less of a product when the cost is higher because the benefits are severely diminished. Crime, as he argues, works the same way. If you can increase the severity and certainty of a punishment, crime will subsequently decrease [1]. John Lott explains deterrence theory in his book More Guns, Less Crime. “[C]riminals as a group tend to behave rationally--when crime becomes more difficult, less crime is committed.” This assertion is backed up by evidence from many studies, including evidence from arrest rates. “Higher arrest and conviction rates dramatically reduce crime.” [2] Lott uses another example specifically relating to death. Most people consider being a cop a very dangerous job. Including both intentional and accidental deaths, the murder rate of police officers is 1:5600. Police are deterred in a way; they wear bulletproof vests, have extensive training for shooting situations, have specific ways they approach cars, etc. They modify their behavior due to a perceived threat. In 2005, the execution rate for murderers was 1:278. A murderer is 20 times more likely to be executed than a police officer is to be shot [3]. If cops change their behavior so significantly for such a small risk, it seems illogical to claim that criminals will not change their behavior when their risks are 20 times larger than the police. We know that even irrational actors can be deterred. Juveniles, who were once considered undeterrable, have actually been found to respond to arrest rates. They act rationally in that when teenage unemployment rises (lack of resources), they commit more crimes (to get resources). When violent crime arrests increase, juvenile crime across the board decreases [4]. Even people who are mentally ill respond to the price of cigarettes, indicating that even people who generally ignore costs can have their behavior altered due to different situations changing the cost/benefit ratio [5]. In the case of the death penalty, deterrence is at work. Joanna Shepard, an economist at Clemson University, uses state data from 1977 - 1999. Each death row sentence deterred 4.5 murders; each execution deterred 3 murders; one murder is deterred for every 2.75 years reduction in time spent on death row [6]. These results hold even after several robustness checks and controls for other variables are applied to the data. Two studies by FCC economist Paul Zimmerman use state-level data and both find deterrent effects. The first paper uses data from 1978 - 1997 [7]. In the second he extends the dataset to 2000 [8]. The second paper looked at multiple methods of execution. The papers find that each execution deters about 14 murders, and the second study found that electrocution had the largest effect. Even a study often cited by death penalty opponents shows a deterrent effect [9]. The reason it is claimed that no deterrence was found is because the abstract and the study itself emphasize capital punishment and overall crime rates. The DP won’t deter other crimes very significantly because the DP does not apply to robbery, burglary, or assault. The study did actually find a negative relationship between homicide and the DP; in other words, the DP deters homicide. One of the best papers on the issue comes from Clemson and Emory University economists [10]. Its methodology differs from the rest in that it uses county data instead of state data. County data is better because it is easier to control for local demographic changes, differences in arrest and conviction rates, poverty, and pretty much everything that affects murder rates. So county data should be prefered. County data, as it is a larger pool of data points, makes the conclusions more robust. The study found that each execution deterred 18 murders. Although this seems high, Lott calculated the impact of each execution to be about 15 per execution or more [11]. Of course, critics of these studies claim that the results are sensitive. But death penalty opponents with their work found a deterrent effect, and then they didn’t like the result so they tried to make it disappear. The tried to make deterrence go away and they couldn’t do it [12]. Goes to show even academics with vested interest in the DP have tried, and failed, to refute their own findings. And if you like pictures: And I can go on and on discussing these studies, as most people on this website know I like to do. I am very confident that these results are correct, even though the NRC and some criminologist Singapore study disagree. I am not trying to argue that every murder is deterrable. That is absurd. I am arguing that the death penalty influences criminal behavior to some degree. And it would be silly to even argue that the DP didn’t deter *some* murders. Murray Rothbard, a libertarian economist, argues “it seems indisputable that some murders would be deterred by the death penalty. Sometimes the liberal argument comes perilously close to maintaining that no punishment deters any crime — a manifestly absurd view that could easily be tested by removing all legal penalties for nonpayment of income tax and seeing if there is any reduction in the taxes paid … the murderer himself is certainly "deterred" from any repetition of his crime.” [16] Police officers respond to incentives. I see no reason criminals wouldn’t, especially because the risk of a murderer being executed is much larger than the police officer is to get harmed. If the police take such drastic measures to defend themselves, imagine how much a criminal’s actions could be changed. C2) DP is just How does punishment work? There are three main goals for any punishment: (1) deterrence, (2) retribution, and (3) rehabilitation. The death penalty is a deterrent, but deterrence is not usually the main goal of punishment. The main goal is to either fix the criminal and make him or her productive or punish them to inflict them harm equivalent to their offense. According to Edward Feser, retribution is the most important part of just punishment [13]. We shouldn’t correct someone who does not deserve correction. Minor crimes, like drug users, deserve correction. Murderers do not. I am not saying that every time someone is murdered that the DP should be sought out. I am merely saying that, in many cases, it may be enacted and would be the preferable course of action. If even one crime calls for the death penalty that would mean we shouldn’t abolish the system--merely mend it to fit a specific type of crime. To use an example Roy cited in his debate, an 11 year old boy was murdered. Not only was he murdered, but he was neglected. He had signs of being beaten, had cigarette burns on his face, marks indicating he was tied up, and was starved (his body weighed 56 pounds) [14]. The death penalty may or may not be the best option for the killers (the mom and dad). But no one would have a moral objection to this. It may even be preferable to execute them. It is for cases like this that the death penalty should at least be an option. The state has the power to kill people; cops are armed with firearms, the military kills people in far away lands every day. The state should do everything within the (constitutional) limits of its power to bring justice to these people. Sometimes the DP may be difficult to use in these situations, in such case LWOP can be used. But I guarantee that there are murders like this which happen all the time. And it is these cases where the DP should be, at least sometimes, sought out to send a message: if you kill someone, you are going to have the same fate. C3) A short preemption: Costs Look I know Mikal is going to bring up costs so I am going to partially preempt this. I am not going to spend a lot of time on this, but a few cursory statements are enough to slightly contain what is one of his strongest arguments. Using the methods cost studies use, the DP costs 2.5 times more than LWOP. But in jurisdictions where the DP is much more common, the DP only costs 1.4-1.5 times as much [15]. Why? Plea bargians. These often avoid the cost of the trial entirely, so cases where there is no cost balance out the cases where trial costs are extremely high due to capital trials. 1. http://www.nber.org... 2. John R. Lott. More Guns, Less Crime, p 20. 3. http://www.foxnews.com... 4. http://www.nber.org... 5. http://www.bus.lsu.edu... 6. http://www.hawaii.edu... 7. http://ageconsearch.umn.edu... 8. http://papers.ssrn.com... 9. http://aler.oxfordjournals.org... 10. http://cjlf.org... 11. John Lott. Freedomnomics, p 135. 12. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu... 13. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com... 14. http://wreg.com... 15. http://www.cjlf.org... 16. https://mises.org...