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Does the death penalty deter crime?

Only a small amount of people are executed per year but many are still present on death row itself, thus making it  a less effective system as brought up here.

Increasing the frequency and celerity of the death penalty could produce a deterrent

Effect, but there is discourse over this considering both human rights, financial evidence, and statistical evidence.

  • University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation’s leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime.

  • Nearly 78% of those surveyed said that having the death penalty in a state does not lower the murder rate.

  • 94% agreed that there was little emperical evidence to support the deterrent effect of the death penalty. 

  • 90% said the death penalty had little effect overall on the committing of murder. 

  • 91.6% said that increasing the frequency of executions would not add a deterrent effect.

  • 87.6% said that speeding up executions wouldn’t work either.

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The simple answer is NO.

Criminology expert responses to a 2008 survey question of: "Do you feel that executing people who commit murder deters others from committing murder, or do you think that such executions don’t have much effect?". Responses on scale from YES, UNDECIDED, and NO respectively.

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