A criminologist's job responsibilities involve analyzing data to determine why the crime was committed and to find ways to predict, deter, and prevent further criminal behavior. Now, this statement does not say whether the death penalty increases, decreases or has any effect on homicide rates at all. In the graph provided is shows the personally opinions of criminologist on whether or not the death penalty is a deterrent.
(Image 1, "Is the Death Penalty a Deterrent?").
In the second graph, it shows the statistics from 1991 to 2013 on the percent of murder cases in states with the death penalty versus states without them. As you can see, the states without the death penalty has less murders. Although many may argue that the death penalty decreases murder, otherwise is shown and not only in the personal opinion of professionals but also statistics provided by the U.S. Census. The most gut-wrenching fact of the death penalty is the fact that it is irreversible. In "Kill the Death Penalty" an article written by Dan Brook wit the reasons as to why the death penalty should be abolished he states, "Innocent people are on death row and innocent people have been put to death. These are irreversible tragedies. A recent study concludes that 4% of people on death row in America are not guilty. Since 1973, 144 prisoners on death row have been found to be innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted." (Paragraph 1) Studies from NCADP also show that about 4 percent of people sentenced to death row are innocent and released. The unfortunate factor of this is that 144 is about 10% of the amount of people sentenced to death row. That leaves many more people's unaccounted for because they were proven innocent after the fact. An Article in Mother Jones present 13 "criminals" with severe mental illness that were still sentenced to the death people. Although all unfortunate cases the most unfortunate was the case of Larry Keith Robison from Texas.
