Changes in capital punishment policy since 1939.

Does Capital Punishment Deter Murder?

Ethical, philosophical and religious values are central to the continuing controversy over capital punishment. Nevertheless, factual evidence can and should inform policy making. The evidence for capital punishment as an uniquely effective deterrent to murder is especially important, since deterrence is the only major pragmatic argument on the pro-death penalty side.1 The purpose of this paper ...

Learning from the Limitations of Deterrence Research

Public policy and scientific knowledge concerning deterrence have long been marching in different directions. Despite the proliferation of threestrikes, mandatory minimum, and concealed weapons laws and retention of capital punishment in 37 states, there is little credible evidence that changes in sanctions affect crime rates, and there is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters bet...

Physicians and the death penalty.

On Sturdy Policy Evaluation

This paper provides an overview of different approaches to policy evaluation. We focus on how different types of uncertainty should be accounted for in the policy evaluation process. Appropriate incorporation of uncertainty in policy evaluation leads to what we call sturdy decisions. We describe classical Bayesian decision theory and decision theory under ambiguity. We provide examples ranging ...

Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence by a Criminologist for Economists

This essay reviews the evidence on the deterrent effect of police, imprisonment, and capital punishment and in addition summarizes knowledge of sanction risk perceptions. Studies of changes in police presences, whether achieved by changes in police numbers or in their strategic deployment, consistently find evidence of deterrent effects. Studies of the deterrent effect of increases in already l...