I've seen some random and cruel stuff, but...

[DarkKobold]

I'm pretty sure you're the only one who thinks like that.

Actually, maybe in today's society, but in ancient Greece, there was actually a higher value put on the lives of elderly than the young. Just because today's society values the youth, does not make it "right."

Personally, I think all life should be valued the same. Why is a 12 year old getting murdered somehow worse than a 24 year old? Both had lives ahead of them. Both had potential to do something great for the world, and experience many great things. Both are tradgedies. Why should one be valued greater than another?

[shmokes]

I doubt gun control is going to help much, if at all.  I am a firm believer in smart gun control.  I think that guns should be tracked.  I think that gun registration should be mandatory where non-gun dealers are selling to eachother, similar to selling a vehicle.  I think it should be illegal for me to go to Dartful's house, give him $500 and walk away with a gun.  I should be required to register it.

But trying to actually keep guns off the street at this point is probably an exercise in futility.  By the way, before anyone tries to track down conflicting statements, I think my position on gun control may have softened some over the last year.

To answer your question Fredster, I'd say that the single most effective solution would be poverty control.  And considering the economic boom of the 90's I'd guess that had some impact crime rate.

As far as NoOne's statements, crimerates dropped across the board in America in that time frame.  For those numbers to show what you'd like them to show you would need to show, say, the average crime rate decrease of death penalty states compared to the average crime rate decrease of states without the death penalty.

Here's some highly partisan hypotheses about possible causes of that crime drop that are unrelated to the death penalty:

The Clinton-Gore Administration

[shmokes]

LMAO, I just noticed the spike at the end of that graph. 

Maybe it was just Clinton   

[Dartful Dodger]

I doubt gun control is going to help much, if at all.

[shmokes]

You should be ashamed of yourself.

How do you know I'm not?

[Dartful Dodger]

You should be ashamed of yourself.

How do you know I'm not?

How do you know I'm not?

[Bones]

I know when it is time for restraint. Gunna sit here on the sideline now stroking my gun and just observe the game.
 

[NoOne=NBA=]

One thing for near certain, it does not decrease the rate.  U.S. states that have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime.

Two problems with those statistics.

How so?
I am refuting Shmokes claim that no states have shown a reduction in violent crime.
As murder is generally the only "violent crime" that is affected by the imposition of a death penalty law, there IS evidence to the contrary.

Actually pretty much ALL states have shown a reduction in violent crime.
It is just most dramatic in New York, which makes the contention that it has not completely false.

Firstly the trend was already downwards and the decrease from 95 to 96 doesn't appear to buck the trend.

Which still proves my point that there HAS been a reduction in violent crimes there.

I believe that rates for all crimes in New York (not just murder) went down over the same period. But I could be wrong.

Again proving my point that there IS evidence refuting Shmokes claims.


You can't pick and choose how to present the data.
The data is the data.
That's why I posted it raw.
Are there other factors? quite probably.
Is there data that supports Shmokes claims, in raw form? No.

As a matter of fact, the total number of murders in the U.S. has gone down 24% during the 1975-2000, which is 1% MORE than the reductions for roughly the same period Shmokes quoted above for Canada.

I would say that makes claims on the other side of the argument invalid as well.
If you discredit the data showing that the implementation of death penalty laws had no effect on murder rates, you MUST equally dispute the claim that repealing them had any effect on Canada's murder rate.

[DrewKaree]

As for deportation method? Booted out of the airplane with a parachute!

The program would be cheap, and highly effective.

You are ignoring the very real and most likely problem with your method.

Having the federal government enact this program would instantly make parachutes cost millions of dollars, perhaps even to the point where the cost per chute would be MORE than housing a criminal for life.

Not to mention that as time goes by, the levels of beauracracy would undoubtedly increase - we'd need a parachute management bureau, several levels of management, etc - as would costs.

Eff that guy.  He killed stabbed a baby.  I dunno why, but that phrase is starting to stick in my head.

[ChadTower]

He stabbed a baby, he didn't kill a baby.

He's an incompetent babykiller.

[Bones]

I just like the word chute.

[shmokes]

Babymaimer

[DrewKaree]

We can't even keep track of pedophiles.  Do you want to burden those resource by tracking honest civilians?

Yeah, what the hell is up with that?  I dunno what it's like in each state, but here in my state, a sex offender is required to register with the local police before moving into an area, but my question about that dumbass "law" is this:  If the person doesn't register, how do they know where to find them, and if they don't register, what....do they throw them in jail for their sentence after molesting....plus the amount of time between moving in and getting caught?

Just a friggen IDIOTIC law set up to make both sides feel like something got done while doing not a damn thing.

[DrewKaree]

I just like the word chute.

chute

I know what you're thinking, and you outta be ashamed of yourself.  Unlike shmokes, I KNOW you're not, because you said chute

[shmokes]

I am refuting Shmokes claim that no states have shown a reduction in violent crime.

I am refuting Shmokes claim that no states have shown a reduction in violent crime.

So you took a single line of my post out of context and disproved it.  Good work. 

But considering the discussion we were having, not to mention the rest of my post that you took my line from, I think it's reasonable to assume that everyone here knows that when I said, "...states that have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime," I was referring to a reduction in crime that is a result of implementing the death penalty.

You indeed presented raw numbers, and they even appear to support your argument.  Unfortunatelyyou can pick and choose how to present the numbers.

Your method of presentation is a common one known supressing evidence.  You presented a phenomenon that applied to every state, and presented it as though it applied only to the single state that happened to implement the death penalty at about the same time that the crime rate began dropping.

[NoOne=NBA=]

As far as NoOne's statements, crimerates dropped across the board in America in that time frame.  For those numbers to show what you'd like them to show you would need to show, say, the average crime rate decrease of death penalty states compared to the average crime rate decrease of states without the death penalty.

Yet you can claim that there's "no evidence showing a decrease in violent crime rates in any state that has recently adopted the death penalty"?

Give me a break, Shmokes.
If you're going to give Paige a bad time about switching arguments in the middle, don't do the same yourself.

The difference in crime rate drops between death penalty states and non is 37.8% for death penalty states, and 55.24% for non.
That is HIGHLY attributable to the fact that the states without the death penalty didn't HAVE problems to begin with.

Interpret the data however you see fit, but at least USE the data to back up your claims.
You accuse me of the following:
"Your method of presentation is a common one known supressing evidence."
Hold yourself to the same standard please.

Unsubstantiated claims like "there's no evidence", when there IS evidence, are just plain deceitful.

[Bones]

I just like the word chute.

chute

I know what you're thinking, and you outta be ashamed of yourself.

[shmokes]

Give me a break, Shmokes.

Oh my lord, this is good stuff.   NBA, we were discussing the death penalty's usefulness as a deterrent.  I'm not changing my argument.  I didn't just randomly make that assertion because it was such an interesting factiod that it bared mentioning despite it having nothing to do with anything.  It was clear to anyone reading the thread, including yourself, that I was saying that no states had a reduction in crime as a result of recently implementing the death penalty. 

By the way....what's the source for those percentages?

[DrewKaree]

I just like the word chute.

chute

I know what you're thinking, and you outta be ashamed of yourself.  Unlike shmokes, I KNOW you're not, because you said chute

But "ya ya in der chute..." just don't have the same ring about it. 

How about "chutenhole"?

[Bones]

How about "chutenhole"?

ya ya, in der chutenhole. deefer, deefer!!

Hmmm... I won't dismiss it, I definitely see potential.

[Grasshopper]

One thing for near certain, it does not decrease the rate.  U.S. states that have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime.

Two problems with those statistics.

How so?
I am refuting Shmokes claim that no states have shown a reduction in violent crime.

Actually you went beyond merely refuting Smokes claim. You said "Sounds like a pretty convincing argument for the death penalty to me".

The stats you presented simply do not show a clear correlation between the introduction of the death penalty and a reduction in the murder rate. If you presented someone with the raw figures and asked them to guess at what year the death penalty was introduced I'm sure that most people would get it wrong.

I'd be more impressed if the figures were more or less constant before 95, dropped sharply just after 95, and then remained more or less constant at a lower level from that point onwards.

The figures suggest that other factors are affecting the murder rate and therefore it would be rash to try and draw firm conclusions.

[shmokes]

It will also be nice to see what the newer information will look like, since the NY Supreme court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in June 2004.

I just did some research that wasn't entirely conclusive, but I might as well post it anyway.  First I checked how the states' crime ranks ranked up, comparing crimes per 100,000.  I was looking great here.  There are 14 states that don't have the death penalty.  The top ten safest states in the crime ranking were ones that either do not have the death penalty or have not executed anyone since statistics began in 1976 (When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could rewrite their old death penalty statutes to make them constitutional -- Prior to that a USSC ruling had voided every state death penalty statute as unconstitutional), except for Pennsylvania, who hold spot number 9 and have executed three people in that time.  In fact, of the states that do not have a death penalty, only three show up in the top 25 most crime ridden states (per capita): Alaska (20th), KS (19th), HI (2).

Then after putting all that data together, I got thinking that a more important measure might be violent crime, since a person cannot be given the death penalty for a crime against property.  Some of the things I picked out from it that seem to favor my argument are the fact out of 892 total executions since 1976, 742 (or 83%) of them were carried out by states that were ranked as the top 25 most violent per capita as of 1993.  Even if you omit Texas entirely (but leave Virginia) 72% of executions were carried out by states that were ranked as the top 25 most violent per capita.  When, exactly, is this whole death penalty thing gonna start paying off for these states?  The zero-execution states have a near monopoly on the 15 best rankings down at the bottom of the list.

Here is the data.  States that do not allow the death penalty are orange.  States that technically allow it, but haven't used it a single time since 1976 are red. 

The format is:  Rank- State - # of executions since 1976

1- SC - 32
2- FL - 60
3- MD - 4
4- TN - 1
5- NM - 1
6- DE - 13
7- LA - 27
8- NV- 11
9- AK - 0
10- CA - 11
11- IL - 12  (Governor issued a moratorium on executions pending review)
12- TX - 340  (not a typo)
13- AZ - 22
14- MI - 0
15- OK - 76
16- MO - 62
17- MA - 0
18- NY - 0 (New York reinstated the death penalty in 1995, but has yet to execute anyone, and as of 2004 it was declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court)
19- AR - 26
20- NC - 35
21- GA - 38
22- AL - 30
23- PA - 3
24- KS - 0
25- NJ - 0 (Court has temporarily halted executions here)
26- MT- 2
27- IN - 12
28- WA - 4
29- CO - 1
30- OH - 16
31- MS - 6
32- CT - 0
33- OR - 2
34- NE - 3
35- RI - 0
36- VA - 94
37- IA - 0
38- HI - 0
39- MN - 0
40- WY - 1
41- KY - 2
42- WV - 0
43- UT - 6
44- ID - 1
45- WI - 0
46- SD - 0
47- NH - 0
48- VT - 0
49- ME - 0
50- ND - 0

Sources:

http://www.doc.state.ok.us/MAPS/incrimUS.htm

http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html

Shortened link by saint - nicic.org

[paigeoliver]

As far as the mythical "gun control" issue.

It wouldn't matter. You could stop selling guns to anyone TODAY, and they would still be on the street for the next 200 years.

[NoOne=NBA=]

My point in all this has been that there is no empirical data to support either claim.
All the raw data can be skewed to prove just about anything you want it to, or can be explained away.
My big point in this thread is that everyone should learn to think for themselves.

Doesn't anybody else find it interesting that everyone in the thread just accepted Shmokes original claims, despite the fact there was no causal relationship between them, and the data used to support them?
Shmokes claims are the "hey, I've heard that before, it must be true" variety.
I've argued this same point from both sides (as well as gun control and evolution) several times, on different boards, and the results are the same.
People believe whatever it is that they have heard the most, or are inclined to believe from the beginning.


Shmokes,

Sorry to ride you so hard here, but hopefully SOMEBODY here learned that they need to question and learn.
Thanks for keeping up your end of the debate.

On a side note, the latest data you just posted doesn't DISPROVE that there is a deterrent effect to the death penalty because, in order to do so, one must assume that all states would have a similar murder rate, given the same death penalty laws.
This hypothesis is completely disproven by checking similar states, with similar laws, in similar parts of the country.

Minnesota/Wisconsin/Michigan is a good example.
They are very similar in size, etc..., all have no death penalty, but have 2.5, 3.3, and 6.1 murders per 100,000 in 2003.
Going down to Alabama/Georgia/Florida, which all have the death penalty gives 6.6, 7.6, 5.4 for the same time period.
Does this prove that the death penalty does not deter crime? No.
Those numbers may actually have been HIGHER down South without the death penalty, and lower up North with it.

It does prove that people down South like to kill each other more than people up North.
Without seeing the murder rates for a given state, during the same time period, and with/without the death penalty, there is no way to get TRUE statistics on the effect of one variable.

Look at the statistics I quoted for New York earlier.
The fact that they HAD the death penalty really didn't PROVE anything.
They didn't, in fact, execute ANYONE during that time period.
The data sure looks good when you use it to prove that it DID help though, doesn't it?

If you look at the 6 states I mentioned above, the common bonds between the higher murder states are drugs, poverty, and racial integration.
That's the point I made in one of the other threads.
There are factors in this equation that are not easily quantified, and affect the results much more than the death penalty, or gun laws.

I expect New York's murder rate to hold fairly steady where it is, with rises/drops that are within normal cycles.
It won't ever fall to the level of South Dakota because there are too many people in New York City who want to kill each other.

[Shape D.]

We can't even keep track of pedophiles.  Do you want to burden those resource by tracking honest civilians?

Yeah, what the hell is up with that?  I dunno what it's like in each state, but here in my state, a sex offender is required to register with the local police before moving into an area, but my question about that dumbass "law" is this:  If the person doesn't register, how do they know where to find them, and if they don't register, what....do they throw them in jail for their sentence after molesting....plus the amount of time between moving in and getting caught?

Just a friggen IDIOTIC law set up to make both sides feel like something got done while doing not a damn thing.

I don't know if you've seen this or not linky but it may be helpful.

[fredster]

These state stats really don't prove the point.  If the argument that the death penalty doesn't deter murder, then do the stats say that getting rid of the death penalty actually reduces the murder rate? There is more than one cause/effect relationship.

I ask again for you researchers, what does deter the murder rate? Anything? What actually does work ?  It can't be NOT handing out the death penalty.

ShapeD, that tracking system may be a huge waste of time.  $4 million so you can watch where somebody is at.  Not necessiarly what he's doing.  I guess the deterant would be that this person would have to wear the thing forever. 

[ChadTower]

The tracking system is so that parents can look up their town and see if someone in their neighborhood is a pedophile.  If they are, you sure as hell don't let that person near your kids.  If that guy in Florida had reigistered when he moved in with his family down there, he would have been the first person questioned when the girl disappeared from her house, rather than the last.  He still had her alive when they asked at the front door and then left without knowing he was a known pedophile.

[Dartful Dodger]

It wouldn't matter. You could stop selling guns to anyone TODAY, and they would still be on the street for the next 200 years.

Thank you Glock.

[NoOne=NBA=]

I ask again for you researchers, what does deter the murder rate? Anything? What actually does work ?

1) Keeping violent/predatory people OFF the streets.

Many murders are committed yearly by people that have a previous record of violent crime.
Keeping them off the street will eliminate ALL murders that would have been committed by these individuals--thus lowering the rate.
There may be no reduction in that rate from the previous year, but the rate will be lower than it would have been if they had been allowed to commit those crimes.


2) Armed resistance.

Again, there may not be an overall drop from one year to the next; but every time a criminal, that would otherwise have harmed/killed an intended victim, is met and stopped through THREAT of use of deadly force, it will keep the overall rate lower than it would have been otherwise.


Something else to consider about the rates themselves is that they include a large number of predatory criminals shooting OTHER predatory criminals.
The "innocent victim killed by a predatory offender per 100,000 persons" number is lower than the murder rate for a given community.
THAT number is the only one I really care about.

[fredster]

The government has no obligation to protect individual citizens from individual citizens.  It's been proven in court many times.  If somebody comes at you with a knife, you should be able to shoot them.

It's that simple.

[shmokes]

My point in all this has been that there is no empirical data to support either claim.
All the raw data can be skewed to prove just about anything you want it to, or can be explained away.
My big point in this thread is that everyone should learn to think for themselves.

Doesn't anybody else find it interesting that everyone in the thread just accepted Shmokes original claims, despite the fact there was no causal relationship between them, and the data used to support them?
Shmokes claims are the "hey, I've heard that before, it must be true" variety.
I've argued this same point from both sides (as well as gun control and evolution) several times, on different boards, and the results are the same.
People believe whatever it is that they have heard the most, or are inclined to believe from the beginning.


Shmokes,

Sorry to ride you so hard here, but hopefully SOMEBODY here learned that they need to question and learn.
Thanks for keeping up your end of the debate.

On a side note, the latest data you just posted doesn't DISPROVE that there is a deterrent effect to the death penalty because, in order to do so, one must assume that all states would have a similar murder rate, given the same death penalty laws.
This hypothesis is completely disproven by checking similar states, with similar laws, in similar parts of the country.

What?  That wasn't your point.  Your point was that the death penalty deters crime and that the Raw data proved it.  You even went so far as saying that we don't get to pick and choose how we present the data. 

I love how you just come in, sounding like the high-handed lecture that Jerry Springer gives at the end of his show, and declare yourself the winner and start talking about the lessons you hope each of us has learned.

People didn't blindly accept my claims here?  It has, in fact, been me against the rest of the people in this thread for the most part, with the exception of Grasshopper (sorry if I missed any supporters).  And I haven't made any claims that have turned out to be false, except the irrelevant one that you twisted out of context.

You have a tendency toward exaggeration NBA.  I did not say that the death penalty increases crime rate.  I said that there is some evidence that it might.  Then in the very next sentence I said, "One thing for near certain, it does not decrease the rate.  (I even bolded the does not)

Most honest people don't read: 
There is evidence that A might happen, but it is a near certainty that B does happen.

as

A happens

Similarly, you act like I claimed that the Canada stats closed the case.  The first line of my post after giving those stats was:  Could there be other reasons?  Sure.  Maybe Canada's economic situation has greatly improved in the same time period.  I don't know.  But the evidence is still pretty compelling.  It's at least worthy of asking yourself...

When I presented my most recent batch of data I specifically said that it wasn't conclusive.  I just pointed out elements of it that "seem to support my argument".  But just because a single set of data doesn't provide a smoking gun, doesn't make the data irrelevant.  It identifies trends, and when you aggregate lots of inconclusive data together you can begin to develop conclusions based on similar trends that pop up in all the data.  At the very least you should look at the data I just provided and ask yourself, "Why is Texas number 12 on the list after 30 years of the most prolific death row in the nation?"  And, "Why, after 30 years of threatening criminals with their lives do the death penalty states still make up the bulk of the most violent states, while the states who are not threatening criminals with their lives take up nearly every spot on the safest-state list?"  The answer to those questions might turn out to be something completely unrelated to the death penalty.  It could be that Democrats tend to oppose the death penalty, but tend to favor some other thing, say drug rehab centers.  So maybe highly democratic states tend to have lots of drug rehab centers and no executions.  Maybe it's the drug rehab that is having the benefits on the crime rate, but since they tend to occur in the same place it's easy to identify the lack of a death penalty as the cause.  But an honest person wouldn't just assume that is the case and refuse to treat the trend as significant.

The data sure looks good when you use it to prove that it DID help though, doesn't it?

I'll point out for your benefit that the deterrent capacity of the death penalty doesn't necessarily depend on executions having taken place.  It obviously was not a deterrent for anyone who is ACTUALLY executed (provided they were actually guilty).  It's the threat of execution that is meant to be a deterrent.  While nobody was executed in the 9ish years that the death penalty was in effect in NY, I'm pretty sure that people were sentenced to death and sitting on death row when the death penalty was repealed in 2004.  I still don't think that it deters any significant amount of crime, and I don't think you can find any evidence that it does.

Also, I think a fundamental part of my philosophy on the death penalty that you don't understand, is that I begin with the death penalty being a negative thing, as should all people.  The government is intentionally taking a person's life who poses no current threat.  Since it is a negative, it has to have positive aspects, just to bring it into neutral territory for me.

So even if it is an exact wash between which prevents more crime, having the death penalty or not having the death penalty, not having the death penalty wins for me, because it starts out as neutral.  If crime rates remain exactly the same after repealing the death penalty, we have moved in a positive direction because we've stripped the government of a power that did not benefit society.

[ChadTower]

He stabbed a baby.  F him.

People defended the babystabber.  F them.

[shmokes]

These state stats really don't prove the point.  If the argument that the death penalty doesn't deter murder, then do the stats say that getting rid of the death penalty actually reduces the murder rate? There is more than one cause/effect relationship.

I ask again for you researchers, what does deter the murder rate? Anything? What actually does work ?  It can't be NOT handing out the death penalty.

ShapeD, that tracking system may be a huge waste of time.  $4 million so you can watch where somebody is at.  Not necessiarly what he's doing.  I guess the deterant would be that this person would have to wear the thing forever. 

Fredster, you may have missed my initial response to you from my first post on this page.  It wasn't very holistic because, for one, I don't think that you need to find something that works better than the death penalty to decide to quit using the death penalty.  What I mean to say, is that there should be a really good reason to kill a person and I don't think there are any good reasons in the case of the death penalty.  The second reason for my short reply is that I don't consider myself an expert on crime reduction strategies by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't think there is really any single cure-all that will take care of it.  With that said, here's my answer:

To answer your question Fredster, I'd say that the single most effective solution would be poverty control.  And considering the economic boom of the 90's I'd guess that had some impact crime rate.

Poor people murder other people.  The poorer you are, the more likely you are to murder someone.  Maybe people with nothing feel like they have nothing to lose.  I don't know.  I'm not a doctor.

[shmokes]

The difference in crime rate drops between death penalty states and non is 37.8% for death penalty states, and 55.24% for non.

By the way, I really want to look at this data.  You might have gathered that this is a topic that I am retarded about interested in.  Where did you get those numbers?

[Dartful Dodger]

Where did you get those numbers?

They are above the letters on your key board.

14.5%,  104.343%, 35%...

They're all there, look for yourself.

[ChadTower]

F is on your keyboard too.

Dude stabbed a baby.  F him.

[fredster]

I don't think that you need to find something that works better than the death penalty to decide to quit using the death penalty.

[DrewKaree]

We can't even keep track of pedophiles.  Do you want to burden those resource by tracking honest civilians?

Yeah, what the hell is up with that?  I dunno what it's like in each state, but here in my state, a sex offender is required to register with the local police before moving into an area, but my question about that dumbass "law" is this:  If the person doesn't register, how do they know where to find them, and if they don't register, what....do they throw them in jail for their sentence after molesting....plus the amount of time between moving in and getting caught?

Just a friggen IDIOTIC law set up to make both sides feel like something got done while doing not a damn thing.

I don't know if you've seen this or not linky but it may be helpful.

Yeah, I had heard about that.  The reason I heard about it?  There have been rumblings that those things are "unconstitutional" and "a violation of priviacy rights" because they'd have to be worn for the rest of their lives.

Crap.  Pure and simple.  I've NEVER (and for anyone who disbelieves this probable statistic, look for examples of where I'm wrong before opening yer mouth) heard of any of the judges with these soft hearts in Wisconsin (clarifier, for those of you following at home) who released a sex offender into their community.

So everyone knows, in Wisconsin, a sexual predator can have his sentence shortened by a judge, who then places that person into a community in a home paid for by tax dollars.  Mr Adelman has been the softest touch, and his seeming ability to allow sex offenders to live amongst the riff-raff and not have it bother him had people wanting to enact knee-jerk laws requiring them to be placed in White Folks Bay.  Oddly enough, Mr Adelman likes them well enough to release them early for "good behavior", but not well enough that he believes they can get along in his community without re-offending.

Sex (or sexual actions) with children should be a mandatory life sentence in my mind.  Children being considered anyone under 18.

[Dartful Dodger]

Washington man charged for killing 2 sex offenders

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A 35-year-old Washington state man was charged with double murder on Thursday after telling police that he had decided to hunt down and kill two sex offenders listed in an online sex offender registry.

I take back what i said about the sex offender registry not working.

[shmokes]

I don't think that you need to find something that works better than the death penalty to decide to quit using the death penalty.  What I mean to say, is that there should be a really good reason to kill a person and I don't think there are any good reasons in the case of the death penalty.

I'm not sure what that means. Sorry. I've read it several times and I don't understand that.

What I mean is that when you find out that bloodletting isn't an appropriate remedy for fevers you don't have to wait until Tylenol is invented before you stop bloodletting.  It means that it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the death penalty is ineffective and expensive and should be stopped, without proposing something to take its place.  It means that we shouldn't continue taking such a drastic and expensive measures if they aren't doing us any good. 

Nevertheless, life in prison is the obvious answer to the question of what it would be replaced with.

As far as my expertise goes, I mean that it's a complex question that can't really be answered "holistically" in a post on a message board.  That isn't to say that I think I have all those answers, but you took a very nearrow topic (is capital punishment an effective deterrent of violent crime) and turned it into, "Okay, if that's not a deterrent, what is?"  There's not just a single answer to that question.  I'm sorry.  That's why you got a weak response out of me.  That topic alone could make a thread five times the size of this one.

And no need to get all toxic about it.  I was making a good faith attempt (both times) to simply answer your question.  Maybe you missed the part of my post that said, "I don't think there is really any single cure-all that will take care of it." 

Still, I think poverty is the single biggest factor.  I suspect that it is the most prevalent common variable you will find in murder cases.