Do Countries with Death Penalty have Decreased Crime Rates?

What is being researched and why is it significant?

I am researching if death penalty affects the crime rates in countries around the world. It is significant because it deals with the lives and future of people, as well as legal murder.

How is this topic related to you/Why did you choose to focus on this topic?

To put it shortly, I am interested in morbid things, societies and human nature, so this subject is a good combination of my interests.

How does the use of geospatial inquiry help in answering this question?

I used comprehension, critical - thinking, reasoning, and reflective skills as suggested by the geospatial - inquiry - how - to.

What was your approach and process for inquiry?

I researched my question, recorded important data, synthesized the data, and drew conclusions.

Why do some countries have death penalty in the first place? Many people believe that death penalty would stop criminals from repeatedly committing crime. They also think that threat of death by law will put off other people who may be considering committing serious crimes. This project will investigate whether or not this is true.

There are many organizations such as Amnesty and ECPM who are against death penalty and sought to have it removed. They believe that death penalty is inhumain, and that killing a person who has done something wrong only causes more pain. They also say that the court of law may not be correct all of the time, so someone may be falsely accused of a crime, and one cannot make reparations to a person who is already dead, as opposed to if they are just imprisoned.

• As seen above, more about 2/3 of the world countries have either completely abolished capital punishment or only reserve it for the most unacceptable of crimes.
• Countries have abolished/semi - abolished capital punishments as a result of activist groups, many within the past 30 years (quite recent)

Below: Guided Map Tour of what is considered crime punishable by death in select countries

• When cross referencing crime rates with method of execution, there seems to be no correlation: method of execution does not affect crime rates

• Unconfirmed if there is correlation between having a death penalty and population happiness: both countries with and without capital punishment made it to the list
• However, the majority is no capital punishment
• The countries with capital punishment who made it onto the list haven't executed anyone in years (ex. Zimbabwe)
• Surprisingly, when cross referenced, population happiness has no correlation to crime rates

• China has the highest number of (speculated) death penalties by far, but one of the lowest crime rates (suspicious)
• Iran holds second highest number of executions and Saudi Arabia holds third highest, both countries execute people who identify as homosexual
• Zimbabwe has had no executions in over 12 years. The government considering taking off death penalty, but would that increase crime rates?

Much to my dismay, many countries in the world still treat LGBTQ2+ as a crime punishable by death. The example that I have researched is Saudi Arabia, where they also treat witchcraft/sorcery as a crime punishable by death so I think it's safe to say that they have a weird government.

Before researching I assumed that making LGBTQ2+ a crime punishable by death there would be no to very few of these peoples (suppressing that part of themselves), but to my surprise this actually does not deter the LGBTQ2+ peoples from being who they are.

 Primary source  (A journalist who went to Saudi Arabia to learn about the situation of the LGBTQ2+ population there)

Above: The LGBTQ2+ population thrives "just below the surface". Other than on the governmental level, the population treats sexual intercourse with the same sex as normal. However, they still avoid any topics on this when the guards are near.

You may think that with such a large LGBTQ2+ community it must mean that the death sentence is only an empty threat; it is not.  5 men were executed in 2019, convicted of homosexuality. 

Looking at the trends I believe that more and more of the world is going to abolish/partly abolish capital punishment. Except a select few countries I think everyone is going to go execution-less. I think this is the most likely trend as looking at previous years more and more countries have been banning capital punishment and very few/none are reintroducing it.

What did you learn about your geospatial problem?/What is a claim you can make after finishing your project?

Goes back to our question of "does death penalty affect crime rate", we can look at different countries to see the patturns:

Venezuela has the highest violent crime rate by far, and there is no capital punishment, with South Africa has the 2nd most violent crime rate and NO capital punishment.

If we just look at this it appears that a lack of death penalty does breed more crime, as the countries with the highest crime rates all lack capital punishment.

However, when we look at the other side of the spectrum things become unclear: while Japan has the lowest violent crime rate and allows death penalty for murder, Spain also has lowest violent crime rate but no death penalty, as does many other countries on the no kill but low crime list.

From this I am going to conclude that death penalty only affects one side of the spectrum: only in the no death penalty = high crime and not death penalty = low crime. (This is also proven in the LGBTQ2+ section: there is death penalty but it doesn't deter the existence of "crime")

Which of the 5 themes of human geography from chapter 1 (place, region, scale, space, or connection) has influenced your topic the most and why?

I'd say region has influenced my topic the most. Different regions have different values (ex. some countries celebrating LGBTQ2+ and some treating it as a crime) which determines whether or not their government chooses to have legal executions. Different regions also have different economic situations and different levels of development which affects the crime rates.