English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

During the last 20 years, a substantial number of empirical studies -most prominent among them the work of criminologist Thorsten Sellin-have concluded that the death penalty has no measurable deterrent effect beyond that of life imprisonment.' A recent study by Isaac Ehrlich, an economist, challenges this traditional view. Ehrlich criticizes Sellin's statistical methods and, on the basis of a more complex statistical procedure, estimates that "an additional execution per year over the period in question [1933-1969] may have resulted, on average, in 7 or 8 fewer murders."3 In Fowler v. North Carolina, 4 the constitutional challenge to the death penalty now pending in the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General presented Ehrlich's findings to the Court and in his amicus brief cited them as "important empirical support for the a priori logical belief that use of the death penalty decreases the number of murders."5 The Solicitor General asserted that earlier studies, and specifically those of Sellin, suffered from "investigatory flaws" and that only Ehrlich's work provided a reliable basis for judging whether the death penalty has a deterrent effect.0 Now that Fowler has been set for reargument, 7 an assessment of the Solicitor General's claims has particular importance. A statistical study cannot prove that executions deter murders, nor

A Comparison of the Work of Thorsten Sellin and Isaac Ehrlich on the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment