Of the numerous studies dealing with the impact of executions on murder, most have reported no effect, a number have reported a counterdeterrent effect, and still others have reported a deterrent effect. This study hypothesizes that the reason for such inconclusive or conflicting findings is the simultaneous occurrence of all three effects: Among the audience of potential murderers, some will be more likely to kill, some will be less likely to kill, and others will be unaffected by the executions of convicted murderers. / Daily homicide data for the State of Florida for 1975-1987 were collected to study the impact of the first seventeen executions in the state following reinstatement of the death penalty. An index is developed, then applied to the homicides in the data file to divide them into three sub-files according to the likely impact of executions on their commission: Deterrable, Brutalizable, and Unaffected. Two types of time-series analysis are used to analyze the data: interrupted time series and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Averages (ARIMA). Daily and cumulative frequencies immediately prior to and following each execution are shown, t-tests are used to measure significance of the pre- and post-execution numbers, and BOGUS tests (using data for corresponding time periods one year prior to actual execution dates) are conducted to compare homicide patterns. Both the interrupted time series and the ARIMA procedure are applied to total homicides, and to each of the values of the trichotomized homicide variable. / Results indicate that (1) executions had no impact on homicides in general, (2) the level of execution publicity did not accurately predict the numbers nor patterns of homicides that followed, and (3) murders indexed deterrable and brutalizable did not move in the expected direction following executions. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-10, Section: A, page: 3733. / Major Professor: Gordon P. Waldo. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76498 |
| Contributors | Bullock, Carol A., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 244 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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