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

死囚牢房中的生存：探索处决的个人、冲突和政治解释

• 批准号: 0417736
• 负责人: David Jacobs
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2006-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0417736&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Survival; Death; Row; Exploring; Individual

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.

社会组织形式与使用死刑的倾向之间是否存在联系？ 在任何高级社会中，目前没有其他法律制裁都不那么严厉，但是对影响执行的条件的研究很少。 在某种程度上，由于公职人员决定了刑事法规，判决和上诉，许多理论家将惩罚视为本质上的政治现象。 导致死亡判决的个人属性的许多研究非常有用，但是政治条件和影响这些法律诉讼的社会分裂的影响应受到更多关注。 例如，州和联邦上诉程序在很大程度上被忽略了，但是这些程序显然是执行率的最重要的解释。 几乎完全是由于成功的上诉只有不到所有州罪犯的10％，最终被处决。 因为很少有资本罪犯以这种方式进行惩罚，并且这些罪犯在死囚牢房上花费了如此多的时间，所以我们建议使用生存分析来评估塑造执行概率的上下文和个人决定因素。 那些法律判处死刑的国家在使用这种极端制裁的意愿方面截然不同。 在许多不愿执行的州，随着死刑的积累和判处这一判决的囚犯人数的增加，这些囚犯在死亡囚犯上的时间越来越长，但其他州的执行时间更快。 这项研究建议分析1973年至2000年美国的死囚囚犯生存率，以检测社会条件和个人罪犯特征，这些特征共同影响了随着时间的推移和整个美国的共同影响执行概率的差异。 这样的研究设计特别适合至少两个原因。 首先，由于法律程序长期延迟导致执行执行，并且由于最终被处决的少数罪犯而导致少数犯罪者，因此最好以生存技术为模型。 其次，人们可以将衡量社会和政治环境的总体变化协变量与生存模型中个体罪犯的特征结合在一起，以找出这些因素如何影响时间和执行的可能性。 因此，通过事件历史程序进行分析，这些程序衡量了应该改变执行概率的个人和环境决定因素，以增加我们对这种致命惩罚使用的理论知识。 例如，可以使用这种方法来查看少数族裔犯罪者是否或多或少地被处决，或者是否更有可能使用这种惩罚的州。 通过这些程序，我们可以查看由于相对保守的管辖区的上诉程序，少数民族资本罪犯的危害率是否较差。这项研究的更广泛影响包括以下内容。 这项研究将引起学者和政策制定者感兴趣的，有兴趣了解导致与美国囚犯处决相关的不平等的因素。 我们提出的研究可以阐明有关死刑的一些关键理论问题，即当美国公共和政策制定者再次质疑这种严厉和不可逆转的惩罚。