Deterrent Punishment

Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment

The reintroduction of capital punishment after the end of the Supreme Court moratorium has permitted researchers to employ state level heterogeneity in the use of capital punishment to study deterrent effects. However, no scholarly consensus exists as to their magnitude. A key reason this has occurred is that the use of alternative models across studies produces differing estimates of the deter...

Getting off Death Row: Commuted Sentences and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment*

This paper merges a state-level panel data set that includes crime and deterrence measures and state characteristics with information on all death sentences handed out in the United States between 1977 and 1997. Because the exact month and year of each execution and removal from death row can be identified, they are matched with state-level criminal activity in the relevant time frame. Controll...

Assumptions Matter: Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment

The effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring homicides has remained unclear despite the fact that the Supreme Court’s moratorium on capital punishment and the subsequent adoption of capital punishment by a subset of states, combined with very different rates of execution across polities, would appear to be an ideal environment for revealing deterrence effects using panel data methods. O...

What Do Panel Studies Tell Us About a Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment? A Critique of the Literature

Objectives We provide a critical review of empirical research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment that makes use of state and, in some instances, county-level, panel data. Methods We present the underlying behavioral model that presumably informs the specification of panel data regressions, outline the typical model specification employed, discuss current norms regarding ‘‘best-practi...

The deterrent effect of the perceived certainty and severity of punishment: A review of the evidence and issues