Ukraine’s experience: Abolition of the death penalty fails to cause boost in homicides
In the late 1990’s Ukraine saw heavy debate on whether to abolish the death penalty.
One of the arguments of supporters of retaining the death penalty was the claim that it will cause a significant increase in the number of murders, saying that when criminals are not afraid of punishment, it is much easier to kill people.
Stupidity and weakness of such predictions actually spoke about fear of changes of some short-sighted politicians, while the absurdity of these forecasts revealed a failure to adequately predict the impact of legislative changes.
What happened in reality the number of murders after the abolition of the death penalty in Ukraine , which was held in December 1999 ? How prescient were policies that frightened citizens rising murder?
According to the country’s Ministry of the Interior, in 1996-2000 the annually rate homicides ranged between 4,529 and 4,896 cases. By 2003, the number had dropped to 4,041, in 2006 - to 3,220, and in 2012 there were 2,356 homicides (51 % of the amount of 1999).
Olexander Bukalov, http://ukrprison.org.ua
