Originally posted by zeeblebotThat is, of course, a lie. Your own ridiculous studies have to exclude the great majority of death penalty states to come up with the "proper" conclusions.
you'd probably like to dwell fondly on that, but it ain't so ... you walked off the argument ... when i asked why your quoted studies that showed no deterrence effect excluded the countries that use the DP the most by far, you said something to the effect of 'why should we want to be like those barbaristic countries?' ... hardly an argument for non-deterrence ... i suppose you consider those "outliers" ...
Originally posted by zeeblebotShepard's studies were discussed at length a long time ago. Here's what I said then:
http://csmonitor.com/2005/1214/p09s01-coop.html
"from the December 14, 2005 edition
Why not all executions deter murder
By Joanna Shepherd
...
Recent empirical evidence initially seemed to confirm the deterrence theory. In the past decade, 12 empirical studies by economists, published in peer-reviewed journals, have found evidence consistent ...[text shortened]... more people than do the states where capital punishment incites crime or has no effect.
..."
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~sam/twiki/pub/Main/PoliticalScience/shepherd1.doc
"I. Introduction
Recent studies by economists, including several by me, have shown without exception that capital punishment deters crime. "
abstra ...[text shortened]... execution program, it may be better to perform no executions."
This article is pretty hilarious. It concludes that the death penalty CAUSES more murders in most states. Then it argues that a certain baseline number of executions are necessary to get the wonderful deterrence effect i.e. 9 per year. Exactly ONE state has averaged this number over the last ten years: Texas which has seen a 61% decline in its murder rate over the last ten years. New York, which has not had an execution in over 40 years, saw a 65% decline in the same period. Please see http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/FaganTestimony.pdf where these neo-conservative "studies" are torn to pieces and justly referred to as "junk science".
http://www.timeforchess.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=24735&page=5
your boy fagan has been working on his paper for a while now, in the meantime:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1745&wit_id=4991
-----------------
"Statistical Evidence on Capital Punishment and the Deterrence of Homicide
Written Testimony for the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights
February 1, 2006
Paul H. Rubin
Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics and Law
Emory University
I. Introduction and Summary
Recent research on the relationship between capital punishment and homicide has created a consensus among most economists who have studied the issue that capital punishment deters murder. Early studies from the 1970s and 1980s reached conflicting results. However, recent studies have exploited better data and more sophisticated statistical techniques. The modern refereed studies have consistently shown that capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect, with each execution deterring between 3 and 18 murders. This is true even for crimes that might seem not to be deterrable, such as crimes of passion. (There is some evidence from unrefereed studies that have not been scientifically evaluated that is inconsistent with this generally accepted claim.)
...
Cross-sectional studies also suffer serious problems. Most importantly, they preclude any consideration of what happens to crime, law enforcement, and judicial processes over time. Cross-section data also prevent researchers from controlling for jurisdiction-specific characteristics that could be related to murder, such as greater urban density in some states.
Several authors expressed similar data concerns with time-series and cross-section data and called for new research using panel data, as I now discuss.
IV. Modern Studies of Capital Punishment’s Deterrent Effect.
Most recent studies have overcome the fundamental problems associated with national time-series and cross-section data by using panel-data techniques. Panel data are data from several units (the fifty states or all U.S. counties) over several different time periods; that is, panel data follow a cross-section over time. For example, a panel dataset might include data on each of the fifty states, or even on each U.S. county, for a series of years. These improved data allow researchers to capture the demographic, economic, and jurisdictional differences among U.S. states or counties, while avoiding aggregation bias. Furthermore, panel data produce many more observations than cross-section or time-series data, enabling researchers to estimate any deterrent effect more precisely. In addition to enjoying the benefits of panel data, recent studies have access to more recent data that make conclusions more relevant for the current environment.
Using improved data and more sophisticated regression techniques, twelve refereed papers have been published or are forthcoming in the economics literature. Their conclusion is unanimous: all of the modern refereed papers find a significant deterrent effect.
I now briefly discuss the modern research in the economics literature from the past decade. I group the papers into those that use panel-data techniques and those using other techniques. (I was co-author of one paper, and my colleague Joanna Shepherd was author or co-author of several more.) I then discuss two papers which have been published in journals that do not subject papers to the refereeing process.
A. Modern Papers using Panel-Data Techniques.
1. Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Joanna Shepherd , and I examine whether deterrence exists using county-level panel data from 3,054 U.S. counties over the period 1977 to 1996. This is the only study to use county-level data, allowing us to estimate better the demographic, economic, and jurisdictional differences among U.S. counties that can affect murder rates. Moreover, the large number of county-level observations extends the empirical tests’ reliability. We find a substantial deterrent effect; both death row sentences and executions result in decreases in the murder rate. A conservative estimate is that each execution results in, on average, 18 fewer murders. Our main finding, that capital punishment has a deterrent effect, is robust to many different ways of performing the statistical analysis and several ways of measuring the probability of an execution. For example, we find the same results if we use state instead of county data.
2. In another paper, Joanna Shepherd uses state-level, monthly panel data from 1977-1999 to examine two important questions in the capital punishment literature. First, she investigates the types of murders deterred by capital punishment. Some people in the debate on capital punishment’s deterrent effect believe that certain types of murder are not deterrable. They claim that murders committed during interpersonal disputes, murders by intimates, or unplanned crimes of passion are not intentionally committed and are therefore nondeterrable. She finds that the combination of death row sentences and executions deters all types of murders: murders between intimates, acquaintances, and strangers, crime-of-passion murders and murders committed during other felonies, and murders of both African-American and white people. She estimates that each death row sentence deters approximately 4.5 murders and that each execution deters approximately 3 murders. In this paper she also finds that that shorter waits on death row increase deterrence. Specifically, one extra murder is deterred for every 2.75-years reduction in the death-row wait before each execution.
3. Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Joanna Shepherd use state-level panel data from 1960-2000 to examine capital punishment’s deterrent effect. This is the only study to use data from before, during, and after the 1972-1976 Supreme Court moratorium on executions. The study advances the deterrence literature by exploiting an important characteristic that other studies overlooked: the quasi-experimental nature of the Supreme Court moratorium. First, they perform before-and-after moratorium comparisons by comparing the murder rate for each state immediately before and after it suspended or reinstated the death penalty. These before-and-after comparisons are informative because many factors that affect crime—e.g., law enforcement, judicial, demographic, and economic variables—change only slightly over a short period of time. In addition, the moratorium began and ended in different years in different states. Considering the different start and end dates, the duration of the moratorium varied considerably across states, ranging from four to thirty years. Observing similar changes in murder rates immediately after the same legal change in different years and in various states provides additional evidence of the moratorium’s effect on murder. The before-and-after comparisons reveal that as many as 91 percent of states experienced an increase in murder rates after they suspended the death penalty. In about 70 percent of the cases, the murder rate dropped after the state reinstated the death penalty. They supplement the before-and-after comparisons with time-series and panel-data regression analyses that use both pre- and postmoratorium data. These estimates suggest that both adopting a capital statute and exercising it have strong deterrent effects.
4 and 5. Two papers by FCC economist Paul Zimmerman find a deterrent effect. Zimmerman uses state-level panel data from 1978 to 1997 to examine the relationship between state execution rates and murder rates. In a second paper, he employs state-level panel data from 1978-2000 to examine which execution methods have the strongest deterrent effects. In both papers, Zimmerman finds a significant deterrent effect of capital punishment. He estimates that each execution deters an average of 14 murders and that executions by electrocution have the strongest impact.
6. H. Naci Mocan and R. Kaj Gittings use state-level panel data from 1977 to 1997 to examine the relationship between executions, commutations, and murder. Again, the authors find a significant deterrent effect; they estimate that each execution deters an average of 5 murders. Their results also indicate that both commuting death-row prisoners’ sentences and removing them from death row cause increases in murder. Specifically, each commutation results in approximately five extra murders and each removal from death row generates one additional murder.
7. Another recent paper by Lawrence Katz, Steven D. Levitt, and Ellen Shustorovich uses state-level panel data covering the period 1950 to 1990 to measure the relationship between prison conditions, capital punishment, and crime rates. They find that the death rate among prisoners (a proxy for prison conditions) has a significant, negative relationship with overall violent crime rates and property crime rates. As expected, the execution rate has no statistically significant relationship with overall violent crime rates (which consist mainly of robbery and aggravated assault rates) and property crime rates; that is, executions have no effect on non-capital crimes. In several estimations, both the prison death rate and the execution rate are found to have significant, negative relationships with murder rates. The deterrent effect of executions is especially strong in the estimations that control for the economic and demographic differences among states.
B. Modern Papers Using Other Techniques
8. Instead of a panel-data study, Dale O. Cloninger and Roberto Marchesini conduct a portfolio analysis in a type of controlled group experiment: the Texas unofficial moratorium on executions during most of 1996. They find that the moratorium appears to have caused additional homicides and that murder rates significantly decreased after the moratorium was lifted.
9. Harold J. Brumm and Dale O. Cloninger use cross-sectional data ...
and especially (Rubin, at the link; if you want Fagan's testimony at the same hearing, go and look.)
"A recent paper in the Stanford Law Review questions some of these studies. This paper purports to show that the estimates of a deterrent effect are “fragile” and can be changed by statistical manipulation. The results of this paper have not been evaluated by competent scholars; the Stanford Law Review, like all law reviews, is edited by students who have no particular competence in econometrics. Moreover, Professors Wolfers and Donohue chose not to make their paper available online through a service such as SSRN or the BE Press, so that the scholarly community did not have access to their analysis before it was published. Steps are in process to generate such an analysis, but at this point the weight of evidence must be interpreted as finding a deterrent effect. Moreover, although Professors Donohue and Wolfers had access to all of the papers mentioned in this testimony, they chose to comment on only some of these papers. "
Originally posted by PocketKings1. Yes
Did the United States Senate make a mistake when it rejected the Versailles treaty and did not become a member of the League of Nations after the war? And did the terms of the ending of WWI guarantee that WWII would happen?
Its hard enough for one country to determine what to do with the losers of a war, but when almost 30 nations get together its alm ...[text shortened]... alot of intelligent people here and I would like to see your thoughts on this historical topic.
2. Yes
Originally posted by PocketKingsMy Reasons are as follows
Interesting how many differents sets of answers have surfaced. but justify your responses, elaborate a little.
1. When USA didn't join the League Of Nations this led to the invasion of Abbysinia From Italy in the 1930's, Japan invading Manchuria. The League didn't have an rmy and couldn't stop anyone of these from happening! this ofcourse led to Hitler and The Policy Of Apeasment which was a disaster!
2. Ofcourse this not ONE of the reasons to lead to WW2 and ofcourse my examples have been clearly said in the upper paragraph...
Originally posted by PocketKingsYes. America made a grave mistake by not joining. America was the tide that turned the war in favor of the Allied Powers. By having this baby superpower in the League that was far away from anyone who might try to invade, war would have a better chance to be averted. The only reason this one of the 14 points was even accepted was that that idea was Wilson's grand baby. It was his ultimate brainchild to preserve peace. And there's another thing. The French were so da needy to punish the Germans (And just the Germans. Austria-Hungary, the country that started the war, and the Ottomans got off easy) slid them into economic depression. We didn't even help them rebuild. Then the Great Depression hits and Germany was shattered. And when you're down, you want some inspiration. You'll listen to anyone who will try to bring you back. Hitler was that man and the rest is history.
Did the United States Senate make a mistake when it rejected the Versailles treaty and did not become a member of the League of Nations after the war? And did the terms of the ending of WWI guarantee that WWII would happen?
Its hard enough for one country to determine what to do with the losers of a war, but when almost 30 nations get together its alm ...[text shortened]... alot of intelligent people here and I would like to see your thoughts on this historical topic.