Comments on: From the Ministry of “It has to sink in eventually, right?” http://apublicdefender.com/2009/10/20/from-the-ministry-of-it-has-to-sink-in-eventually-right/ Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:28:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Christopher http://apublicdefender.com/2009/10/20/from-the-ministry-of-it-has-to-sink-in-eventually-right/comment-page-1/#comment-52143 Christopher Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:07:30 +0000 http://apublicdefender.com/?p=2441#comment-52143 So really, there's two directions you can go. You can drop the death penalty, or you can go at it guns-a-blazin'. In the old-old-<em>old</em> movies, everybody is terrified to commit murder. "We're gonna be hanged" is said in just about every movie (with a murder) from the black-and-white era. While this is a terribly unscientific use of "evidence" on my part, I think it does reflect something about the society at the time . . . you didn't murder because, if you got caught, you were gonna be hanged, period. Imagine if we only vaccinated 2 people a year. It would still cost the same amount (hundreds of millions, I believe) to develop the vaccines. It wouldn't cost as much to produce them, because you'd only have to buy enough raw material for two vaccine doses. But the net effect on public health of only vaccinating two people would be . . . well, nothing. Statistically, the population would be no healthier than if you inoculated nobody at all. So there'd be no cost-effectiveness to vaccinations. Public health officials would rate them the least-effective use of taxpayer money. People would argue on blogs that we should just drop vaccines altogether. And if the alternative was 2 vaccinated people a year, they'd be right. But if we vaccinate more and more people, the per-vaccination cost goes down, while the net public benefit goes up. Once you've inoculated a certain number of people, even non-vaccinated people experience a health benefit, because of their reduced chance of contracting the disease. I believe the same is true with execution. We don't execute enough people now to be of any statistical benefit to the rest of us. It's not a deterrent the way it's done now, and it's not saving enough lives (deterrent-wise or future-offenses-wise) to be matter. But that doesn't mean the only option is to drop it. The other option is to doggedly pursue it. If every first-degree murder conviction carried an automatic penalty of death, the state wouldn't be spending that much more on capital trials, and you'd get a much better deterrent effect (like the moderate one in Texas, the state with by far the most executions, and the only state with a demonstrable per-execution deterrent effect). It's not a pretty choice, but it would be disingenuous to say the evidence only points in one possible direction. So really, there’s two directions you can go. You can drop the death penalty, or you can go at it guns-a-blazin’.

In the old-old-old movies, everybody is terrified to commit murder. “We’re gonna be hanged” is said in just about every movie (with a murder) from the black-and-white era. While this is a terribly unscientific use of “evidence” on my part, I think it does reflect something about the society at the time . . . you didn’t murder because, if you got caught, you were gonna be hanged, period.

Imagine if we only vaccinated 2 people a year. It would still cost the same amount (hundreds of millions, I believe) to develop the vaccines. It wouldn’t cost as much to produce them, because you’d only have to buy enough raw material for two vaccine doses. But the net effect on public health of only vaccinating two people would be . . . well, nothing. Statistically, the population would be no healthier than if you inoculated nobody at all. So there’d be no cost-effectiveness to vaccinations. Public health officials would rate them the least-effective use of taxpayer money. People would argue on blogs that we should just drop vaccines altogether. And if the alternative was 2 vaccinated people a year, they’d be right.

But if we vaccinate more and more people, the per-vaccination cost goes down, while the net public benefit goes up. Once you’ve inoculated a certain number of people, even non-vaccinated people experience a health benefit, because of their reduced chance of contracting the disease.

I believe the same is true with execution. We don’t execute enough people now to be of any statistical benefit to the rest of us. It’s not a deterrent the way it’s done now, and it’s not saving enough lives (deterrent-wise or future-offenses-wise) to be matter. But that doesn’t mean the only option is to drop it. The other option is to doggedly pursue it. If every first-degree murder conviction carried an automatic penalty of death, the state wouldn’t be spending that much more on capital trials, and you’d get a much better deterrent effect (like the moderate one in Texas, the state with by far the most executions, and the only state with a demonstrable per-execution deterrent effect). It’s not a pretty choice, but it would be disingenuous to say the evidence only points in one possible direction.

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