Capital Punishment: Does it do what it is intended to?

I have been researching capital punishment this week.  I did not post on Wednesday; this is because I have found that this topic is more difficult to research than I thought that it would be.  I am still researching the Biblical aspect of the topic, but I have come to several reasons not regarding the Bible that have influenced how I have thought about capital punishment.

There are many reasons that people are for capital punishment.  Several of these reasons are cost, deterrence, special deterrence, and respect for human life. 

The cost argument for the death penalty is that it costs more to keep someone in prison than it does to execute them.  In all actuality, capital cases can be quiet expensive.  In 1982 in a report by the New York State Defenders (as quoted by Nathanson, 2001, p. 37), it was estimated that it would cost more than $1.4 million dollars to conduct all the legal process surrounding an execution for a single person.  Imagine how high these prices would be today. 

Another common argument for the death penalty is that it deters other people from committing murder because they know that they might be executed.  The problem with such a claim is a lack of true evidence, because the topic is so difficult to study scientifically.  In “The Death Penalty: No Evidence for Deterrence”, Donohue and Wolfers state that there is no current evidence (as of 2006 when the article was written) that the death penalty actually deters crime.  It states the flaws that are in past studies.  Flaws of past studies are also outlined by Nathanson (2001) in “An Eye for an Eye”.  Upon comparing murder rates in death penalty states and murder rates in non-death penalty states (according to these statistics), the rate seems to actually be lower in states without the death penalty (see picture below from website with the statistics).  Whether this is due to the death penalty being in place or whether it is due to other reasons needs further studies.

Special deterrence is another argument for the death penalty that states that if you execute a murderer it prevents that person from committing future murders.  Does it prevent offenders from offending again more than a lifetime sentence and is there an actual problem?  As long as the murder does not escape, I believe that a life sentence would serve just as well.  Also, I do not believe that there is a real problem with reoffenders.  Hugo Bedau compiled a study in which he examined 2,646 people convicted of murder who were released between 1900 and 1976 (Nathanson, 2001, p. 30).  He found that only 16 were convicted of another homicide.

Overall, I do not believe that the death penalty actually accomplishes any of the benefits that advocates of capital punishment raise and this is one of the main reasons that I believe that the death penalty should not be in place in current times.

References:

Nathanson, S. (2001). An eye for an eye, the immorality of punishing by death. (2 ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc.

Donohue, J. & Wolfers, J. (2006, April). Donohue, j., & wolfers, j. (2006, april). the death penalty: No evidence for deterrence. retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/donohuedeter.pdf.Economist, Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/DonohueDeter.pdf