Jailya Wooden
Walden University
DPSY 8700
January 22, 2023
Smith, P. (2022). Is the death penalty on the way out? More states are abolishing, fewer juries are handing down death sentences, and the number of executions is falling.
The New York Times
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The article's purpose was to introduce the issue of capital punishment in the form of the death sentence, whereby individuals have different arguments regarding whether the penalty should remain in practice. The article provides an example of a murder case where two individuals brutally murdered a woman, and her killers received the death sentence, which later was put on hold as the county in which they were going back to rethink the death penalty approach. The article is, therefore, relevant in its ability to depict how the death penalty works by providing an example of a case where the same was put into practice. However, it also provided the needed approach of outlining that the death penalty has widely reduced in support from an overwhelming 80% support in the 90s to 54% in 2021. This can be used to indicate a need for change in the reforms related to this area.
Cloninger, D. O. (1992). Capital punishment and deterrence: a portfolio approach.
Applied Economics, 24(6), 635-645.
The article sought to analyze the relationship between the impacts of the death sentence as capital punishment and the aftermath in terms of the expectation of a decline in crime rate to mean that by imparting capital punishment, the overall number of homicides was expected to decrease. However, the article noted that there were aspects that availed the needed environment for crimes to exist, even in cases where the death sentence was used as a tool of caution in any given society. This was further associated with the idea that there was no way of ensuring that the portfolio crime rate did not change or alter. In such a case, it was easier to assign that the death sentence alone could not be expected to resolve the idea of crime, especially homicides. This article would thus help rationalize the idea that the death sentence is not crucial in controlling crime, especially when it comes to homicides.
Decker, S. H., & Kohfeld, C. W. (1990). The deterrent effect of capital punishment in the five most active execution states A time series analysis.
Criminal Justice Review, 15(2), 173-191.
Similar to the second study, this study analyzed the death sentence's effect on the overall crime rate with the hope that there could be a unique pattern or algorithm for the identification of the relationship between the existence of the death sentence and the number of crimes every year. However, it was noted that while the death penalty was a significant factor in many proceedings that involved homicides, it did not indeed bear great significance in the number of crimes committed each year. This meant that people were not genuinely controlled by such laws or possible sentencing in their overall decision-making regarding the idea of committing a crime. By this finding, the article argued that such a law was of no consequence to the need to reduce crime, particularly homicides. This article can therefore be used in articulating an approach to prove the lack of use of such punishment using a well-investigated and documented study that was conducted using years of data.
References
Cloninger, D. O. (1992). Capital punishment and deterrence: a portfolio approach.
Applied Economics, 24(6), 635-645.
Decker, S. H., & Kohfeld, C. W. (1990). The deterrent effect of capital punishment in the five most active execution states A time series analysis.
Criminal Justice Review, 15(2), 173-191.
Smith, P. (2022). Is the death penalty on the way out? More states are abolishing, fewer juries are handing down death sentences, and the number of executions is falling.
The New York Times.