Abstract
The deterrent effect of the death penalty is one of the most important issues of the debate over capital punishment. While retentionists assume that the death penalty has the greatest deterrent effect of all possible criminal sanctions, abolitionists deem most murder cases are those that cannot be affected by the threat of the penalty of death. This chapter goes around these aspects, also giving place to the counter-arguments of the two sides.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf.: Alexander Deak: On Capital Punishment [A halálbüntetésről], p. 57. In: Belügyi Szemle, 1995/1, pp. 55–57.
- 2.
Ibid., pp. 55–56.
- 3.
Cf.: György Pálinkás: Requiem for a Legal Institution [Requiem egy jogintézményért], p. 70. In: Belügyi Szemle, 2001/6, pp. 63–73.
- 4.
CC Decision No. 23/1990 (X. 31.).
- 5.
Considering that the majority of the Hungarian criminal lawyers and criminologists are abolitionist, I will not provide a list of them and references to their works in the subject, herein. The interested readers may nonetheless find the list of these works—published in Hungarian—in the bibliography of the following monograph: Zoltan J. Toth: Capital Punishment: Pros and Cons [Halálbüntetés pró és kontra]. HVG-ORAC, Budapest, 2012, 291 p. (ISBN 978-963-258-177-4).
- 6.
Cf.: Isaac Ehrlich: The Deterrent Effect of Criminal Law Enforcement, p. 274. In: Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 1, 1972, pp. 259–276; Isaac Ehrlich: On Positive Methodology, Ethics, and Polemics in Deterrence Research, p. 128. In: British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 22, 1982, pp. 124–139; Joanna M. Shepherd: Murders of Passion, Execution Delays, and the Deterrence of Capital Punishment. In: Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2004, pp. 283–322.
- 7.
Pamela Watkins, a very rare example, was such an offender. (For the case of Watkins see: Anthony G. Amsterdam: Capital Punishment, p. 357. In: Hugo Adam Bedau (ed.): The Death Penalty in America. Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 346–358.) In Hungary, the famous offender of the bank robbery of Szena square committed the crime with this kind of motivation as well and, as contrasted to Watkins, actually succeeded in his plan.
- 8.
Cesarec Beccaria: An Essay On Crimes and Punishments [1764]. E-book. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2011, p. 49.
- 9.
Beccaria, op. cit., p. 51.
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Toth, Z.J. (2020). The Deterrent Effect: From An a priori Logic. In: Changing Attitudes Towards the Death Penalty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47557-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47557-4_2
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