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Criminologists: Death penalty does not deter

Via Capital Defense Weekly, I was interested to see this new survey of top US criminologists (pdf) on the question of whether the death penalty deters murder, a debate refocused by several much-disputed studies (mostly by economists) in the last six years claiming to find a deterrent, after "scores" of studies by criminologists over previous decades had reached the opposite conclusion. The authors analyze recent studies on death penalty deterrence and follow up by replicating a survey of criminologists published 12 years ago, before the recent econometric studies were published.Despite these new studies, however, most criminologists (88.2%) still "do not believe the death penalty is a deterrent," researchers found, while 87% said abolishing the death penalty would have no effect on murder rates...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).