Michael J. Godfrey and Vincent Schiraldi

About the author: Vincent Schiraldi is the founder and Executive Director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) in San Francisco. Schiraldi has served on government commissions dealing with prison overcrowding, juvenile probation, and minorities and crime, and has published numerous commentaries on juvenile and criminal justice issues. Michael J. Godfrey is a research assistant at CJCJ.

The most frequently used argument to justify death sentences is that executing a person convicted of a capital crime deters other people from committing the same crime. Studies, though, have failed to show that homicide rates fall immediately after executions; to the contrary, an increase in homicides is not uncommon after a publicized execution. This phenomenon, known as a "brutalization effect," was demonstrated in California, where the homicide rate...