ABSTRACT
A corollary of deterrence theory is that increasing the penalty for an offense will decrease its frequency, while decreasing the penalty will cause infractions to multiply. Until the past few centuries, the death penalty was imposed often and for many offenses, some of which seem trivial to the modern eye. Unique aspects of the death penalty have contributed to abolitionist sentiment. At present, other justifications for the death penalty having become less tenable, deterrence theory occupies center stage in the debate over capital punishment. Support for the death penalty has shown a pattern of long-term decline and, more recently, resurgence. In the 1930s, surveys showed that roughly two-thirds of the American people supported the death penalty, and as late as the 1950s, an average of seventy executions a year were carried out in the United States.
