For some offenders, the death penalty is not a deterrent but a desired reward
Evidence
The death penalty is unlikely to deter killings of this type. For example, at his court-martial for the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, the military psychiatrist turned Islamic extremist Nidal Hassan insisted on conducting his own defense. He also tried to plead guilty before the trial began, but military rules did not allow it. He was accused of trying to get the death penalty as an act of martyrdom that would be rewarded in the afterlife (Kenber, 2013). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1964
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- SEED: A counterexample to deterrence theory: execution as an actively sought religious reward — angle on how punishment regimes misread the motives of those they punish.
Related
- Ideological killers may seek execution as martyrdom, inverting the death penalty’s deterrent logic (similarity 0.91)
- Pro-death-penalty advocates concede execution lacks proven deterrent superiority over imprisonment (similarity 0.82)
- The death-penalty deterrence question resists controlled experiments because society cannot randomize executions. (similarity 0.81)
- Death penalty deterrence claims cannot be supported by existing research (similarity 0.80)
- Death penalty positions rest on retributive, economic, or rights-based rationales (similarity 0.80)
- Support for capital punishment rests on retribution, not deterrence evidence (similarity 0.80)
- No credible evidence shows the death penalty deters homicide (similarity 0.79)
- Martyrdom belief overrides self-preservation, defeating deterrence-based defense (similarity 0.79)
- Death penalty safeguards get framed as prioritizing guilty lives over public safety (similarity 0.78)
- Support for the death penalty is moral, not evidence-based for either side (similarity 0.78)
- Even executioners must morally justify killing through mixed rationales that make it easier (similarity 0.78)
- Executioners recruit moral, deterrence, and cost-efficiency rationales to justify killing. (similarity 0.78)