Capital Punishment
Title
Capital Punishment
Author
Lynch, Mona
Research Area
Social Institutions
Topic
Institutions of Social Control
Abstract
This essay reviews foundational and cutting‐edge social science research on capital punishment. It first describes policy‐relevant work on the death penalty as legal punishment, and then provides a brief overview of the more recent contributions on capital punishment and social theory. The scope of relevant scholarship is limited to more empirically based social science scholarship on the American death penalty. Specifically, relative to the longstanding, foundational research on capital punishment, it addresses in order, the research on the deterrent effect of the death penalty; racial inequality in the administration of capital punishment capital case processing and jury decision‐making; and the role of public opinion in the death penalty. It then discusses the more recently developed body of research that addresses the culture of capital punishment; and capital punishment and state governance. Finally, it lays out several potential lines for new research, including contextualizing death penalty within a broader punishment framework.