Survival on Death Row: Exploring Individual, Conflict, and Political Explanations for Executions

社会组织形式和使用死刑的倾向之间是否存在联系？在任何先进社会中，目前可能没有其他法律制裁如此严厉，但对影响死刑执行的条件的研究很少。部分原因是政府官员决定刑法、判决和上诉，许多理论家认为惩罚本质上是一种政治现象。对导致死刑判决的个别因素的许多研究非常有用，但应更多地关注影响这些法律程序的政治条件和社会分歧的影响。例如，州和联邦上诉程序在很大程度上被忽视了，但这些程序显然是对死刑执行率最重要的解释。几乎完全由于成功的上诉，只有不到10%的被判处死刑的州罪犯最终被执行死刑。由于很少有死刑犯以这种方式受到惩罚，而且这些罪犯在死囚牢房中度过的时间差异很大，我们建议使用生存分析来评估影响执行概率的环境和个人决定因素。死刑合法的国家在使用这一极端制裁的意愿上差别很大。在许多不愿执行死刑的州，随着死刑判决的累积和被判死刑的囚犯人数的增加，这些囚犯在死囚牢房中待的时间越来越长，但其他州执行死刑的速度要快得多。本研究拟分析1973年至2000年美国死刑犯的存活率，以发现社会条件和罪犯个人特征共同影响美国不同时期和不同州执行概率的差异。这样的研究设计是特别合适的，至少有两个原因。首先，这一过程最好以生存技巧为模型，因为导致处决的法律程序有很长时间的延迟，而且最终被处决的死刑犯人数很少。其次，人们可以将衡量社会和政治环境的时变协变量与生存模型中罪犯个体的特征结合起来，找出这些因素如何影响处决的时间和概率。因此，用事件历史程序进行的分析，衡量了应该改变执行概率的个人和环境决定因素，应该增加我们关于使用这种致命刑罚的理论知识。例如，这种方法可以用来观察少数族裔死刑犯是否更有可能被执行死刑，或者少数族裔人口较多的州是否更有可能使用这种刑罚。通过这些程序，我们可以看到，在相对保守的司法管辖区，由于上诉程序，少数死刑罪犯的危险率是否更低。本研究的更广泛影响包括以下几点。对于有兴趣了解导致与美国囚犯处决相关的不平等因素的学者和政策制定者来说，这项研究将会很有意义。在美国公众和政策制定者再次开始质疑死刑这种严重且不可逆转的惩罚的时候，我们提出的研究可以揭示一些关于死刑的关键理论问题。

Is there a connection between forms of social organization and the propensity to use capital punishment? Probably no other current legal sanction in any advanced society is as harsh, but there is little research on the conditions that influence executions. In part because public officials decide the criminal codes, sentences, and appeals, many theorists view punishment as an intrinsically political phenomenon. The many studies of the individual attributes that lead to death sentences have been extremely useful, but the influence of political conditions and the social divisions that influence these legal proceedings should be given more attention. For example, the state and federal appeals process has been largely ignored, but these procedures clearly are the most important explanation for execution rates. Almost entirely due to successful appeals only less than 10% of all state offenders given a death sentence ultimately are executed. Because so few capital offenders are punished in this manner and because these offenders spend such diverse amounts of time on death row, we propose to use survival analysis to assess the contextual and individual determinants that shape execution probabilities. Those states in which the death penalty is legal differ sharply in their willingness to use this extreme sanction. In many states that are reluctant to execute, as death sentences accumulate and the number of prisoners given this sentence grows, the amount of time these prisoners spend on death row becomes longer and longer, but other states execute far more quickly. This study proposes to analyze death row inmate survival rates in the US from 1973 to 2000 to detect the social conditions and the individual offender characteristics that jointly affect differences in execution probabilities over time and across the U.S. states. Such a research design is particularly appropriate for at least two reasons. First, this process is best modeled with survival techniques due to the long delay in the legal procedures that lead to an execution and due to the small minority of death row offenders who ultimately are executed. Second, one can combine aggregate time-varying covariates that measure the social and political environment with the characteristics of individual offenders in survival models to find out how these factors affect the timing and the probability of executions. It follows that analyses conducted with event history procedures that gauge both the individual and environmental determinants that should alter execution probabilities ought to add to our theoretical knowledge about the use of this lethal punishment. For example, this approach can be used to see if minority death row offenders are more or less likely to be executed or if states with larger minority populations are more likely to use this penalty. With these procedures we can see if minority capital offenders have a worse hazard rate due to the appeals process in comparatively conservative jurisdictions. The broader impacts of this study include the following. The research will be of interest to scholars and policymakers interested in understanding the factors that lead to inequalities associated with executions of US prisoners. The research we propose can throw light on some critical theoretical issues about the death penalty at a time when this severe and irreversible punishment is again starting to be questioned by the US public and policymakers.