Of Methods and Men: The Social Production of Knowledge on the Effectiveness of the Death Penalty

Rational choice theory has given birth to a massive amount of quantitative empirical knowledge on the deterrent effect of punishment, a field in which results are often confusing and discordant. This paper explores the research communities working on the correlation between executions and homicides, and identifies a « vocal minority » of academics who are very favorable to the death penalty. Knowing the name of the author of an article is a better predictor of the correlations found by the article that the type of data used. This study also shows the typical profile of an author who has a large amount of pro-death penalty results: an American economist, who does not present himself as a specialist in crime and punishment, and who teaches in a faculty ranked lower than the one where he obtained his PhD. On the other hand, sociologists and economists of high-ranking universities tend to find results closer to a « zero » effect of the death penalty on homicide.