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HUNTSVILLE — As many as 60 people may be alive today in Texas because two dozen convicted killers were executed last year in the nation's most active capital punishment state, according to a study of death penalty deterrence by researchers from Sam Houston State University and Duke University.
A review of executions and homicides in Texas by criminologist Raymond Teske at Sam Houston in Huntsville and Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concludes a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas follows each execution.
“Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions,” the study published in a recent issue of Criminology, a journal of the American Society of Criminology, said.
The study adds to decades of academic dissection of the death penalty and deterrence. Results over the years vary from capital punishment saving more lives than suggested in this study to no conclusive effect.
Focuses on Texas

This study, however, is the first to focus on monthly data in Texas, where researchers said the number of executions — 447 since capital punishment resumed in 1982 — is statistically significant enough “to make possible relatively stable estimates of the homicide response to executions.” A national deterrent effect can't be determined because “most states ... have not engaged in a sufficient level or frequency of executions per year,” they said.
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports capital punishment, said the study “would be sufficient by itself to justify the death penalty.”
Execution foe skeptical

But Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization opposed to capital punishment, said while he was not a statistics expert, “the large number of variables affecting these calculations and the relative rarity of executions make final conclusions about deterrence very suspect.”



Study says Texas death penalty a homicide deterrent | Houston & Texas News | C

Maybe I missed something but..aren't people convicted of mureder the ones who are less likely to re-offend compared to some other crimes.. I doubt every single person put to death in TX would have killed again had they been released..

The recitivism rate on crimes of passion is low, but multipul murders is another. I'm not sure of the stats. but it's gotta be up there, and if not, then mental illnesses, or psychopaths. Having done time, alot of it, i do know something of the query at hand. They are ruthless, vendictive, and have little to no conscience for the most part that is. The real psochopaths that is. The crime of passion type probably would never do it again.