Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?

The death penalty has been one of the most controversial and divisive issues facing the American public for many years. This study focuses on the merits of the theory of deterrence as applied to capital punishment, which holds that the threat of death will prevent people from committing capital crimes. Two hypotheses govern this study: 1) States with a death penalty statute will have lower rates of crimes punishable by death than states without death penalty statutes, and 2) States that have the most executions will have fewer crimes punishable by death than states that do not use their death penalty often and those without a statute at all. To analyze each of these hypotheses, two case studies were performed with two states fulfilling requirements for each realm of having or frequently using the death penalty and comparing crime rates of these states over certain periods of time. Also for hypothesis 1, the crime rate means were calculated and compared for states with and without the death penalty in 1970 and 2000. To satisfy hypothesis 2, the mean 2004 crime rates were calculated for the nine states frequently using their death penalty statutes and the 41 who either do not use the penalty often or do not have a death penalty