The Death Penalty
Part 1 – how tyrants hijacked the death penalty, and democracies took back control
Image: thoughtco.com
Why do some countries apply the death penalty for serious crimes, yet others don’t? My thoughts about this question go back to our evolutionary history. Back to the Pleistocene – covering 2.5 million years of human evolution.
There have been dramatic flips in the application of the death penalty. Back then small bands used it to reduce hierarchy. Potential tyrants were removed. With the development of larger, more complex and hierarchical societies, those at the top of the hierarchy ensured that the death penalty reinforced their position. The trend in the last century to abolish the death penalty is, I suggest, an example of the democratisation of modern societies. In a way a return to the egalitarian impulses of our ancient ancestors.
This does not explain why some democratic countries (or States of the United States) continue with capital punishment. Potentially, this is because, again reaching back in our evolutionary history, humans evolved personality traits that enable us to get along in groups. One of these traits influences our enthusiasm for tough responses to non-conforming group members.
In this piece, I will be exploring the evolution of capital punishment and the contemporary discussion around whether it does deter bad behaviour.
First – back to the Pleistocene. What can you do if a bully is monstering your hamlet? What can you do if there are no written laws, police force, courts or prisons?
The evidence marshalled by Chris Boehm, Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at the University of Southern California, is that you form an alliance and plan the demise of the bully. The perpetrators are usually close relatives. This reduces the risk of blow-back. If the relatives on the recently deceased bully take exception to their son, brother or father being bumped off, they could start a messy intra-clan fight. This would put the future of the group at risk. But they can’t very well attack themselves.
This is such a compelling argument that Richard Wrangham, Harvard Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, sees it as the origin of human’s mastery of proactive aggression. Reactive aggression is the impulsive, unregulated variety of aggression. Reactive aggression is typically elicited by a threat, especially in young human males, a threat to their status. Proactive aggression is cold-hearted, planned murder. The sort of murder that those conspiring how to get rid of a bad bully would have perpetrated.
The rise of states is associated with an initial rise in the rate of lethal violence. Presumably as a consequence of this spike in violnet crime codified laws and formal courts are developed. A historical review by John Laurence found that the death penalty was a part of these ancient written laws, from every civilisation. These states also saw an increase in hierarchy.
At the top of the hierarchical state was an autocrat overseeing the machinery of social control through laws and courts (and the allied elite who managed them). The power of life and death is now held by a tyrant, not a conspiracy of clan members.
Fast forward to 1864 and Venezuela becomes the first country to abolish capital punishment for all crimes. This trend of repealing the death penalty continues, with a burst after the Second World War. Now the majority of countries (70% according to Amnesty International) have ended their use of capital punishment.
What led to this shift? One explanation is the spread of democracy. Increasing the engagement of all the members of a state or country through their contribution to decision-making seems to be related to reduced use of capital punishment over time.
Here is an illustration of that. The number (and percentages in brackets) of countries with or without the death penalty in terms of their level of democracy:
As the level of democracy increases from minimal to medium and then to very high levels the application of the death penalty drops. The use of the death penalty goes to zero in the “most democratic” of countries. Before you ask – I am using the “Polyarchy Index of Democracy”, which correlates strongly with democracy indexes developed by The Economist (.847) and Freedom House (.845).
Democracy could play a part in countries deciding to do away with the death penalty. But there are certainly other factors in play. An illustration of that is the 27 States of the United States which retain capital punishment as a legal penalty.
Have the countries that have abandoned the death penalty got it right? Is the death penalty needed to deter criminals from bad behaviour?
The extensive research on whether capital punishment deters homicide is inconclusive. A comprehensive international review and meta-analysis published in 2009 found no deterrent effect of the death penalty on homicide (Thomas Rupp and his co-authors included 250 studies of the deterrent effect on homicide).
Another (2008) meta-analysis by Bijou Yang and David Lester included 95 studies from around the world. These authors found that the death penalty does have a deterrent effect, although research methods influenced results. “Time-series” and “panel” studies (that is, looking at trends over time, and so, to some extent controlling for other variables) were more likely to demonstrate a deterrent effect. “Cross-sectional” studies (typically comparing countries or geographical regions) did not. Summarising these studies the authors reported that 60 supported a deterrence hypothesis, 35 did not. They found a statistically significant “effect size” across the studies of 0.115. This is not a “small” effect size. Effect sizes of 0.20 are “small”. This effect is less than small.
The evidence is that the death penalty has a minimal if any effect on homicide.
Possibly part of the reason for the persistence of the death penalty is the power inequalities in some societies, with elites using the death penalty to maintain their control and power.
Why some democratic (or at least moderately democratic) countries continue to apply the death penalty is the subject of a future piece.