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Theory of Deterrence of Death Penalty

Author: XingZuoYu
Tutor: QiuXingLong
School: Xiangtan University
Course: Criminal Law
Keywords: death penalty deterrent effect marginal deterrent effect efficiency inefficiency
CLC: D914
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2005
Downloads: 649
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Abstract

Whether death penalty has deterrent effect and how much on earth if it really has this effect, is one of focus points in the debate on the retention or abolition of death penalty. In most cases, abolitionists invariably claim that death penalty has no deterrent effect at all or it can not deter more from crimes than life imprisonment, and on the contrary, retentionists, all without exception, argue that death penalty has incomparable deterrent effect to homicide, especially to murder. From the heckle of “people do not fear death, how can you threat them with death”, which implied the suspect of ideologists in ancient China to the deterrent effect of death penalty, to the latter-day criminal laws restricted the malfeasant pursue to the deterrent effect of death penalty with equivalence, and to the emergence of world swim of abolishing death penalty in modern times, the theory of deterrence of death penalty went across the course from prevalence to decline. In the rational examination on the deterrent effect of death penalty, the focus is whether or not death penalty has marginal deterrent effect in comparison with life imprisonment. Whether death penalty has deterrent effect or not and whether death penalty has more marginal effect compared with life imprisonment are two different questions. The forxmer is a qualitative judgement, concerning whether death penalty can deter crime or not, and the later is a quantum judgement, examining the deterrence of death penalty can deter how many people from crimes. Empirical studies on the deterrent effect of death penalty resulted in various conclusions because of different approaches, scope of analysis, quality of data and designs of studies. We have no way to know how many people were deterred from crimes because of application of death penalty since we lack convictive evidences. And till now empirical studies on the assumption of the deterrent effect of death penalty do not provide it with unanswerable evidence. It is impossible to ascertain the deterrent effect of death penalty in this circumstance. Human sense tells us that a humane and rational society could consider to deprive lives of human beings only in the case that overwhelming evidences prove that deprivation of death penalty could save lives through deterring violence. However, the author of this paper does not draw this conclusion that death penalty has special deterrent effect through the comparative examination on the deterrent effect of death penalty. And neither available evidences can prove nor disprove whether death penalty has much more marginal deterrent effect than life imprisonment. Thus we have to say that whether death penalty has special deterrent effect is still a proposition awaiting testification.

Theory of Deterrence of Death Penalty

Abstract

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