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TESTING THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: A Reduced Form Approach
Author(s) -
YUNKER JAMES A.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1982.tb00442.x
Subject(s) - homicide , punishment (psychology) , economics , socioeconomic status , capital punishment , capital (architecture) , shock (circulatory) , argument (complex analysis) , criminology , demographic economics , psychology , econometrics , social psychology , sociology , poison control , demography , suicide prevention , history , medicine , population , environmental health , archaeology
There are three principal alternative explanations for the dramatic rise in crime over the last 15 years: (I) the retirement of capital punishment; (2) socioeconomic trends; (3) random social shocks starring with the Kennedy assassination in 1963. This article reports a statistical test of the second of these explanations. On balance, the results are unfavorable to it. The statistical test involves the extrapolation of a predicted homicide rate obtained from a reduced form regression equation estimated over the capital punishment era into the postcapital punishment era. The predicted homicide rate (based on socioeconomic variables) continues the long‐run secular decline pattern after 1962, while the actual homicide rote rises precipitously. The article concludes with a brief argument that the capital punishment moratorium seems somewhat more plausible than the social shock theory as an explanation for the crime increase.