bd-from-kg

Amen-Moses:

If this were a fact it would indeed be hard to explain. In fact, it would be hard to explain in any case. The real world is far too messy for any such perfect correlations to exist.

First, the authors don’t claim that every time we fail to execute someone there will be 18 more murders as a result. I’d hate to think that the failure to execute me, for example, has resulted in 18 murders. This refers only to people who have committed just the kind of brutal murders that do often get the death penalty. It’s clearer to say that they claim that each actual execution deters 18 murders, on average. (And they say that the uncertainly in this figure is plus or minus ten, so it could be as low as 8, even on their showing.)

Second, I don’t get your arithmetic. I don’t have exact figure handy, but the number of murders in England and Wales is somewhere around 1,000 per year. 18 x 5, on the other hand, is 90.

Third, the UK is not the U.S., and results of multiple regression analysis of this kind applied to statistics from one country simply do not apply to another.

Finally, even if we could be confident that the results were exactly correct, and you applied them to the U.S., they couldn’t be used to predict that murder could be eliminated entirely by executing N murderers. Look. Suppose that a study showed (correctly) that airing a certain commercial nationwide once would increase sales of Coca-Cola by 1%. It doesn’t follow that showing it 100 times would increase sales by 100%, and that showing it 1000 times would increase sales by 1000% .

Amen-Moses

Originally posted by bd-from-kg
If this were a fact it would indeed be hard to explain. In fact, it would be hard to explain in any case. The real world is far too messy for any such perfect correlations to exist.

Can you give a single example of a long term rise in murder rates after the abolishment of capital punishment?

Second, I don?t get your arithmetic. I don?t have exact figure handy, but the number of murders in England and Wales is somewhere around 1,000 per year. 18 x 5, on the other hand, is 90.

The number of crimes that would be 1st degree murder in the US, i.e those that would actually qualify for capital punishment should we have it is in double figures. The rest are classed as manslaughter due to mental illness or crimes of passion etc, they are crimes for which no punishment can be a deterrant because the perpetrators aren't thinking at the time of the crime.

Third, the UK is not the U.S., and results of multiple regression analysis of this kind applied to statistics from one country simply do not apply to another.

Why would the deterrant factor be different in different cultures? If it is then surely in countries that do not currently have the death penalty the deterrant value should be higher because that culture values human life more.

Amen-Moses

bd-from-kg

everlastingtongue:

I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a single known case of an innocent person being executed in the U.S. since 1900. (No one seems to be prepared to dispute this.) I’m not at all sure that no innocent person was in fact executed. As I said in the post you were replying to, if you keep executing people, sooner or later you’ll execute an innocent person. The legal system is a human institution, which means that it’s fallible. (It can be improved, of course; in fact it is being improved; and I support these efforts wholeheartedly.)

But it’s significant nonetheless that there are no known cases of innocents being executed over this long period. There are lots of known cases of innocent people being subjected to every other type of punishment, in fact, the “known error rate” for incarceration is so high that if it were that high in the case of capital punishment there would be a dozens of known cases. So the fact that there aren’t any tells us that the error rate for capital punishment (in this country) is extraordinarily low compared to the error rate for other kinds of punishment.

If your position is that no one should be executed unless we have absolute, metaphysical certitude that he’s guilty, then of course we shouldn’t execute anyone, because that kind of certainty does not exist in this world. But what justification do you have for applying this impossible standard to capital punishment and not to anything else? We don’t apply this standard (“no deaths of innocents are tolerable”) to any other human institution or activity.

I looked into these cases and a number of others. I certainly appears that the cases were mishandled and that the level of confidence that the people involved were actually guilty was not high enough to justify execution. It’s a lot less certain that they were innocent. But it’s possible. Surely you don’t think that death penalty advocates are such fools that they think that no innocents are ever executed? that’s pretty insulting.

But the idea that these cases are forgotten after the person is executed is refuted by even a cursory look at the literature on the two men you mention. There are still ongoing efforts to prove that they were innocent years after they’ve been put to death.

It’s telling that you insist on “proof” for the claim that the death penalty is a deterrent but are satisfied with mere claims that discontinuing it lowers murder rates. Your bias is showing. The correct standard is to compare the relative likelihood that it deters to the likelihood that it increases murder rates. In my opinion, this is no contest. The evidence is overwhelming that people respond to incentives in the obvious ways: positive incentives increase the amount of the behavior in question; negative incentives decrease it. The claim that capital punishment works the opposite way is a claim that it is an extremely rare exception to this well-established rule. The presumption is therefore heavily in favor of the hypothesis that it deters. In my opinion what evidence there is strongly favors this hypothesis. But even if the evidence taken as a whole were somewhat in favor of the opposite theory, a rational person would still favor the deterrence hypothesis because of the strong presumption in its favor. (If requested, I’ll be glad to once again give a short exposition of Bayes’ Theorem to make this point clearer.)

This is a disputed point, to say the least. (Don’t you even bother to look at the literature on the other side of a hotly debated issue?)

Is this really how you buy soap? Let’s see: “The ads for Brand A claim that it’s better, the ads for Brand B claim that it’s better. But brand A is cheaper. Gee, this is a no-brainer; I’ll buy Brand A.” How about cars? If so, I’ve got a great used car for you. I claim that it’s better than the brand new car you’re looking at (although the manufacturer of the new car disputes this). And it’s definitely cheaper. Why would you even think of buying the new car?

Radcliffe Emerson

I too think spending years and years in a prison cell thinking about what got you there would be more of a punishment than being put to death.

midnight

I'm not against the death penalty. I think it would work more as a prevenative if everybody that was committed of murder was swiftly put to death. But here in the states that wouldn't work (1) because of the due process clause and (2) the court appointed attorneys usually aren't worth the space they take up. I don't think jail time or death penalties are really punishments. Its a way to separate dangers to society from the rest of society. From what I've read there is a high return to jail frequency so obviously doesn't work as a deterent either. Now personally I'd rather be innocent and be put to death than spend twenty years in jail and then exonerated. I am absolutely horrified at our jail system. I'm all for rehabilitation/education. I mean if we are going to cage people like animals we might as well teach them better tricks. But that is my ideal and as I've come to find out the world is far from ideal. So I advocate death penalty as a merciful punishment. Yes I have seen documentaries on the various ways to put someone down. Yes they can be barbaric. I would still rather spend that relatively brief time being in horendous pain than a life time in prison where one is can be habitually raped and have other horrors happen day after day after day. . . really I want to reform the jail system. Guess I should start writing my congressperson. . . . .

Amen-Moses

Here in the UK we used to believe in the rapid punishment theorem and today we have just exonerated someone put to death 53 years ago. His execution followed only 4 months after the trial and it was only 13 years ago that anyone questioned the verdict. Now we find that he was innocent.

This is about the twentieth such exoneration that I can recall (the death penalty was removed when I was still in nappies) so it is falacious to say innocents do not get killed.

Amen-Moses

everlastingtongue

bd-from kg,

If you have information showing that the death penalty isn’t more expensive, I would certainly like to see it.

I consider the evidence that it does cost more overwhelming. Studies affirming that it is more expensive have been conducted by:

National Bureau of Economic Research
Indiana Criminal Law Study Commission
Sacramento Bee
Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the California Legislature
Nebraska Judiciary Committee
Dallas Morning News

Here is the link:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arti...did=108&scid=7

Even Amnesty International is convinced:http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/cost.html

Remember that it is not the death penalty itself that is more expensive, but rather the trial and likely appeals that cost more. Every time a person does not get the death penalty, the money has already been spent trying them and then taxpayers must pay for any prison time in addition, if they are convicted.

And according to the Department of JusticeThat means almost 9 times out of 10, the taxpayer pays the exorbitant cost for a capital trial, but doesn’t get the result, and pays for prison time in addition for those who do not die or are not released, in the form of a reduced sentence, or while they wait on death row.

Here is the DOJ link:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cp01.htm

Here are a few quotes, all from the first link:

bd-from-kg

Amen-Moses:

Look, I’ve done a lot of research already to find facts and figures for the U.S. Now you want me to do a lot more research to disprove your totally implausible claim that “in every society that has abolished the death penalty murder rates have either stayed the same or gone down”. If you want to base your argument on this supposed fact, prove it. The burden of proof is on the one who asserts.

You said “totally eradicate murders”; you said nothing about first degree vs. second degree, etc. How is anyone going to understand you if you don’t say what you mean? Anyway, the argument is completely bogus no matter what you meant.

Lots of reasons. And the figure would come out very different for different countries even if the deterrent factor were exactly the same. You just can’t apply figures derived from a regression analysis based on U.S. data to another country. If you don’t understand this, take an introductory course in statistics.

It’s not exactly self-evident that refusing to execute even the most brutal murderers reflects a greater respect for human life than executing them. It can be argued (an in fact has been argued quite eloquently by a great many people over the centuries) that executing those who show wanton disregard for human life is one of the most powerful ways to express respect for human life. See, for example, the quotation from John Stuart Mill that I cited earlier.

Also, you’re assuming that the presence or absence of capital punishment in a given country reflects the wishes (and thus the values) of the people of that country. That’s not so. Lots of countries don’t even pretend to be democracies. And in the so-called democracies of western Europe capital punishment was abolished against the wishes of a clear majority of the people. (This is part of a general pattern. Government policies in most of these countries reflect the views of a small elite, not the people as a whole.)

Are you referring to someone in particular? I haven’t seen anyone say anything of the sort on this thread.

bd-from-kg

everlastingtongue:

My claim was not that I could “show” it, but that this was a disputed issue. See, for example:

1. This paper, part D: The Cost of Life Without Parole vs. the Death Penalty.

2. This paper – section titled “Capital Punishment and its Costs”.

My point was simply that when a statement is seriously contested it’s intellectually dishonest to state it as if it were an accepted fact without giving any indication that it’s really a disputed claim.

But frankly I find it hard to believe that anyone would seriously consider this a relevant question. After all, if I were able to convince you absolutely that executions are cheaper than life without parole, would that persuade you to support capital punishment? Of course not. This isn’t an economic issue. No one who believes that the death penalty is just and saves a substantial number of innocent lives is going to oppose it because it costs a little more. No one who believes that it is unjust and that it doesn’t save innocent lives is going to support it because it saves money.

everlastingtongue

Just as I suspected. Neither of your two links take into account the cost of a capital trial where the accused is not given the death penalty, but instead a lesser sentence. The costs begin at the trial stage, and the money is spent regardless of the outcome – so a straight single case vs. single case example doesn’t factor in these costs, nor does it factor in the costs of the cases that are commuted to life after the trial, during the appeal process. Bottom line, in any capital case, the majority of the costs are “up front.”I said that I’ve found the evidence overwhelming and that it has convinced me – just because you don’t agree doesn’t make my claim intellectually dishonest.My point is this. If both systems, one with capital punishment and one without, have the same net benefit – keeping convicted criminals off of the street, then why would anyone choose the more expensive option, particularly when it is such a touchy moral issue as well?