re: #526 Obdicut

Meanwhile, in reality, the murder rates in non-death penalty states are consistently lower than those in death-penalty states.

[Link: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org…]

And law enforcement does not see it as an effective deterrent.

[Link: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org…]

Image: LawEnforcementViews.jpg

And, of course, criminologists overwhelming say that is not a deterrent.

Image: deter9608.jpg

But hey, what do experts, police chiefs, and actual facts know about the subject? “Surely” it must be true that the death penalty is a great deterrent.

The correlation is causation fallacy. Here we go, logic 101.

Homes with rat traps set out have more rats. That doesn’t prove that rat traps cause rats. The death penalty is the response to the problem, not the cause of the problem.

If police chiefs think that other steps than the death penalty give more bang for the buck, they’re probably right. So what? The whole idea of punishment, of any sort, is that the prospect of the punishment is a deterrent. And it is.

Why would the death penalty be any different?