9/22/00 3:05 p.m.
“Don't Know Much About Calculus”
The Times flunks high-school math in death-penalty piece.

By William Tucker, a frequent commentator on NYC politics &
author of The Excluded Americans: Homelessness and Housing Policies

n this month's American Spectator, I compare the dramatic rise in homicide during 1965-1985, when executions were effectively banned in this country, to the even more dramatic decline in homicides since executions were revived over the last ten years.

In the article, I state: "Opponents of the death penalty have traditionally pointed to high murder rates in Southern, states which have historically high rates and death penalty laws, to New England states, which have historically low rates and no death penalty, and concluded that the death penalty doesn't work. None of this measures the rate of change in homicides since the death penalty has been revived."

The New York Times continued this tradition on Friday (September 22) with a front-page article entitled: "States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates." The co-authors cite a "new survey by the New York Times." Their conclusion:

"Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average. In a state-by-state analysis, The Times found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty."

And so the tradition continues.

What this analysis fails to include, of course, is high-school calculus. The rate of murder in Texas as compared to Massachusetts over the past 20 years means nothing. It simply reflects cultural factors. (One of the most important is probably the weather. As police officers say, "The best policeman in the world is a cold night." Cultures where people are outdoors twelve months of the year always have higher rates of murder than cultures where winter hits hard. The states with the lowest rates of murder are North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Massachusetts while the highest rates are in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Maryland, and Nevada. That North Dakota, Iowa, and Massachusetts don't have a death penalty means absolutely nothing.)

The only significant measure of the death penalty's effects is the relative decline (or rise) in homicides since executions began in earnest over the past decade. Even the Times own graphs show that homicides have declined much more sharply in states with the death penalty than without. When we break down the figures by region, the effect is even more dramatic.

Executions really only began in earnest in 1992. In that year they exceeded 30 for the first time since 1962. Last year there were 99. While executions have risen sharply, the rate of homicide has fallen dramatically. In 1991 it was 105 per 100,000 — just short of the all-time record (107 in 1980). Last year it was 64. This alone would suggest that the death penalty is having an impact.

But the effect becomes even more dramatic when we break the figures out by region, as is done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. According to BJS, the sharpest decline has been in the "West South Central" — Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. These four states account for half the nation's executions. Their rate of homicide dropped from 144 percent of the national average in 1991 to 124 percent in 1998. The second most dramatic drop was in the South Atlantic (Delaware through Florida), which fell from 116 percent of the national average in 1992 to below the national average in 1997 (but back up to 114 percent in 1998, the last figures available.)

Meanwhile homicide rates have declined only moderately in other regions. In New England, where there have been no executions, murder rates over the past decade have been almost perfectly flat. While the region's homicide rate was only 36 percent of the national average in 1992, it has now crept up to 41 percent. In the regions where non-death-penalty states are concentrated (Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota), homicide rates have declined only slightly. The most dramatic changes have been where the death penalty is now being enforced.

The Times story does nothing more than repeat the dumbest of all dumb mistakes — taking the murder rate in a traditionally high-homicide state with capital punishment (like Texas) and comparing it to a traditionally low-homicide state with no death penalty (like North Dakota) and concluding that the death penalty doesn't work at all. Even this comparison doesn't work so well. The Times own graph shows Texas, where murder rates were 40 percent above Michigan's in 1991, has now fallen below Michigan, the classic example of a northern urban state with no death penalty.

The recent revival of capital punishment has offered a prime opportunity to compare and contrast state-by-state rates of executions and homicides. So far I don't know of anybody who has done this. For a $5,000 grant I'll do it myself. (Sorry but I've got responsibilities.) The Times study actually presented the opportunity. Instead, the authors closed their eyes and took a giant step backwards.