In The Texas Tribune they have a fantastic article discussing the death penalty. I found it very interesting that in America we did not have the death penalty in use for many years and what started us using it again was an execution in Utah thirty years ago by firing squad. I would have thought that type of execution would not have occurred as recently as thirty years ago.I am also astonished that the current use of the death penalty has only been around since I was born.
In Texas, the death penalty is a hot item of conversation. I would love to see if use of the death penalty is decreasing due to the death penalty "doing it's job" and persuading people not to commit crimes or is it due to the fact that, as a culture, we are less likely to hand out that punishment. If I were pressed to choose which is the reason, I would certainly lean more towards our culture being less likely to use the death penalty then anything else.
To really understand the pattern of highs and lows in executions, you have to look at the socioeconomic issues of ~20 years prior, as that's when the folks being executed today were given their death sentences.
ReplyDeleteThe short version of the story is, number of executions are a very macabre mirror of economic wellbeing and social discourse of years past. When executions are high, they're just an echo from 20 years previous - not inherent in the crimes themselves.