Pro-death-penalty advocates concede execution lacks proven deterrent superiority over imprisonment

Evidence

Ernest Van Den Haag (1986) accepted some inequality as “unavoidable as a practical matter in any system.” He disputed reported evidence that execution is costlier than life imprisonment. In putting a more benign face on execution, he contended that life imprisonment degrades an individual’s humanity more than execution does. In his view, an individual convicted of murder is unworthy of living. Any degradation, he argues, is self-inflicted. Van Den Haag acknowledged that there is no consistent evidence that execution is a better deterrent than lifetime imprisonment, but argued contradictorily that execution is more feared than imprisonment, so it deters some prospective murderers. The fear of lifetime imprisonment probably deters some likely murderers as well. The issue in dispute is not whether fear of execution or of lifetime imprisonment may deter some murderers. The dispute concerns marginal deterrence gain. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2088

Categorization

• QUESTION: The marginal-deterrence framing — both punishments deter, the question is by how much more — is worth chasing in the deterrence literature.