Death penalty deterrence claims cannot be supported by existing research

Evidence

In sum, there is no consistent evidence that the death penalty deters would-be murderers (Fagan, 2006). In a comprehensive review of research on the effect of the death penalty, a committee of the National Research Council concluded that much of the research is flawed and provides no informative evidence of a deterrent effect (Nagin & Pepper, 2012). The report cautions against using unreliable findings as a basis for policies regarding capital punishment. The elusiveness of the relationship between the death penalty and deterrence indicates that threat of the death penalty has little effect on the individual dynamics of homicidal behavior. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1955

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the vault’s thesis that punishment severity does not affect crime rates, from the Frankfurt School book.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1955