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"Majority of Leading Criminologists Find Death Penalty Does Not Deter Murder"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the heading to this new entry at the Death Penalty Information Center based on the publication of a new article now appearing in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology titled "Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists."  Here is the DPIC entry with links to more details: Eighty-eight percent of the country?s top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide, according to a new study published June 16 in Northwestern University School of Law?s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  The study, ?Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists,? concludes: ?Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the world?s top criminologists believe that the empirical research has revealed the deterrence hypothesis for a myth ? [T]he consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).