Judgment Day

Death Row at San Quentin, which currently houses 622 inmates.The Death Penalty Information Center has this short summary of a study recently completed by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) on the relationship between homicide and execution rates. The results are quite interesting, and continue to prove that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent. Here are the highlights:

• States that execute many people and states that execute no one show the biggest decline in homicides (34% and 36% declines, respectively).
• States that execute few people have the least decline (24%) in homicides.
• The data shows that the homicide rates in states such as Texas, which leads the nation in executions, and in non-execution states such as New York, show the biggest declines.

The study looked at the effect of the 1,051 legal executions on the 446,457 homicides in the 50 states and D.C. during the 1984-2006 period.