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

社会组织形式与使用死刑的倾向之间是否有联系？在任何先进社会中，目前可能没有其他法律制裁像这样严厉，但关于影响死刑执行的条件的研究很少。在一定程度上，因为公职人员决定刑法、判刑和上诉，许多理论家将惩罚视为一种本质上的政治现象。对导致死刑的个人属性的许多研究非常有用，但影响这些法律程序的政治条件和社会分歧的影响应该得到更多关注。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执行率最重要的解释。几乎完全由于上诉成功，最终被判处死刑的所有国家罪犯中只有不到10%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花费的时间如此之多，我们建议使用生存分析来评估影响执行概率的背景和个人决定因素。那些死刑合法的州在愿意使用这一极端制裁方面存在很大差异。在许多不愿执行死刑的州，随着死刑的累积和被判处死刑的囚犯数量的增加，这些囚犯在死囚牢房度过的时间变得越来越长，但其他州的执行速度要快得多。这项研究建议分析1973年至2000年美国死囚存活率，以检测社会条件和个体罪犯特征共同影响处决概率随时间和美国各州的差异。至少出于两个原因，这样的研究设计特别合适。首先，由于导致处决的法律程序的长期拖延，以及最终被处决的少数死刑犯，这一过程最好是用生存技术来模拟。其次，人们可以将衡量社会和政治环境的聚合时变协变量与生存模型中个体罪犯的特征结合起来，找出这些因素如何影响执行死刑的时间和概率。因此，通过事件历史程序进行的分析，衡量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惩罚的理论知识。例如，这种方法可以用来观察少数族裔死囚是否更有可能被处决，或者少数族裔人口较多的州是否更有可能使用这一刑罚。通过这些程序，我们可以看到，在相对保守的司法管辖区，少数族裔死刑犯是否有更严重的危险比率，因为上诉程序。这项研究的更广泛影响包括以下几个方面。有兴趣了解导致美国囚犯处决不平等的因素的学者和政策制定者将对这项研究感兴趣。在美国公众和政策制定者再次开始质疑死刑这一严厉且不可逆转的惩罚之际，我们提出的这项研究可以揭示有关死刑的一些关键理论问题。

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.