Another Study Finds Death Penalty Doesn't Deter Homicide

Dr. Mike Males of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice recently completed a detailed statistical study of the death penalty’s effects on homicide rates. His conclusion: ‘the death penalty is irrelevant to homicide.’This conclusion is consistent with those of numerous other distinguished researchers, as John Holdridge and Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project have shown in an article on HuffPost.In his report, “Death Penalty and Deterrence: The Last Word,” (PDF) Males analyzed FBI homicide data, Bureau of Justice statistics on state executions and homicide trends, and Census Bureau population figures in the period of 1984 to 2006, in which 1,051 state-sanctioned executions occurred.This new study-a statistical analysis of numbers provided by the state and federal governments- will be difficult for even hard-core death penalty proponents to ignore.