Executions, Deterrence, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities

Abstract

We compare homicide rates in two quite similar cities with vastly different execution risks. Singapore had an execution rate close to one per million per year until an explosive 20‐fold increase in 1994–1995 and 1996 to a level that we show was probably the highest in the world. Then, over the next 11 years, Singapore executions dropped by about 95 percent. Hong Kong, by contrast, had no executions at all during the last generation and abolished capital punishment in 1993. Homicide levels and trends are remarkably similar in these two cities over the 35 years after 1973, with neither the surge in Singapore executions nor the more recent steep drop producing any differential impact. By comparing two closely matched places with huge contrasts in actual execution but no differences in homicide trends, we have generated a unique test of the exuberant claims of deterrence that have been produced over the past decade in the United States.