"The demographic differences between places like Alaska, North Dakota, Maine and Vermont are not different than that of Texas or Virginia?"
Correct. Apparently not. But the death penalty states have almost double the homicide rates. Now why do you think that W. Virginia is 30% lower homicide rates than Virginia. Why don't those killers who are not being deterred in Virginia simply slip over to W. Virginia where they wouldn't have to be deterred so damn much?!
"The homicide rate in North Dakota, which does not have the death penalty, was lower than the homicide rate in South Dakota, which does have it, according to F.B.I. statistics for 1998. Massachusetts, which abolished capital punishment in 1984, has a lower rate than Connecticut, which has six people on death row; the homicide rate in West Virginia is 30 percent below that of Virginia, which has one of the highest execution rates in the country.
Other factors affect homicide rates, of course, including unemployment and demographics, as well as the amount of money spent on police, prosecutors and prisons.
But the analysis by The Times found that the demographic profile of states with the death penalty is not far different from that of states without it. The poverty rate in states with the death penalty, as a whole, was 13.4 percent in 1990, compared with 11.4 percent in states without the death penalty." |
