Overview: Trends in the Crime Control Industry

The number of executions and the size of the death row population (those awaiting execution) has ballooned since the restoration of the death penalty in 1976. But the situation is subtle; more so than the graph (following) illustrating the size of death row suggests.

The graph's mid-1970s depression represents the period between the 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision that declared existing death penalty laws to be unconstitutionally "arbitrary and capricious" and the 1976 Supreme Court's upholding of the new death penalty laws in Gregg v. Georgia.

Encouragingly, the number of new arrivals on death row in 2001 was the smallest number since 1973: 155. 11 The number of executions in 2001 was down from the 1999 peak of 98, to 66. As of mid-December, 68 executions had been carried out in 2002.

A graph of the number of executions, while smaller than the number of people on death row, tells a different story. Implementation of the death penalty had become quite rare (at least compared to the size of the death row population) prior to the 1972 Supreme Court decision. There were 5 executions in 1965, 1 in 1966 and 2 in 1967, and no more than 2 per year until 1983.

Making future predictions based on these graphs is complicated not only by the evolving moral and legal views on the death penalty, but by the long delay between changes in the law and a resulting change in the number of death sentences and executions.

Factors suggesting the death penalty will be carried out more frequently in the next 5 years:

Factors suggesting the death penalty will be carried out less frequently in the next 5 years:

This page is an excerpt from The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry (April 2003) by Peter Wagner, published by the Western Prison Project and the Prison Policy Initiative.

Footnotes

11 Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment 2001, p. 9.

12 American Bar Association Juvenile Death Penalty Initiative http:// www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/juvdp.html.

13 Death Penalty Information Center Year End Report 2002, p. 2, 6.