Master of Science in Criminal Justice, Youngstown State University, 2017, Department of Criminal Justice and Consumer Sciences

The death penalty has been one of the most controversial issues facing the American public for many years. The purpose of this research was to determine the effectiveness of capital punishment in reducing the violent crime rate. The focus of this study was integrative as I reviewed previous research to see if its conclusions support my hypothesis. My hypothesis is that the death penalty is not effective in reducing the violent crime rate and secondly that states with a death penalty have just as high of crime rates as states without a death penalty. Most offenders are not thinking with a rational head at the time they commit their crimes. They are usually not pondering the consequences of jail time if/when they get caught. I gathered my evidence from a meta-analysis of other death penalty deterrence studies. I found that there are many studies proving that the death penalty does not deter violent crime and why it is failing in doing so. Some of the benefits of this study are to enlighten people to the fact that we as a nation must realize the failures of the death penalty and recognize that every other industrialized nation has discontinued the use of the death penalty. Thus, as the embodiment of the free world we must stop killing offenders for nothing more than mere retribution.

Committee: Patricia Wagner JD (Advisor); Jim Willock (Committee Member); Derick Young (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology