If you’re anywhere near a criminologist’s head at the moment, it’s advised that you take cover.

“Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it,” said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”
A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?”
Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory — if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy away from murder).
To explore the question, they look at executions and homicides, by year and by state or county, trying to tease out the impact of the death penalty on homicides by accounting for other factors, such as unemployment data and per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more.
Among the conclusions:
# Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).
# The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.
# Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

h/t

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, former Reagan speechwriter, on today’s dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial;

It is an appropriate time to be dedicating this memorial. It was 20 years ago this week that President Reagan gave his now famous Berlin Wall speech. A columnist in the New York Times recently noted that the foreign policy gurus of that era, as compared to the American people in general, have not acknowledged the significance of that forceful challenge by President Reagan to the Communist Party boss Michael Gorbachov to “tear down this wall.”
The columnist noted that even George Shultz did not mention the speech in his lengthy memoirs of his years as President Reagan’s Secretary of State. Well, let’s set the record straight. George Shultz and the foreign policy elite, including Collin Powell, adamantly opposed that speech. They did everything they could to pressure President Reagan not to take such a tough public stand against the wall. They insisted that it would re-ignite “ill will” and would be taken as an insult to Gorbachov.
They were wrong and President Reagan’s moral clarity and commitment to confronting evil, rather then ignoring it for diplomatic or political purposes, carried the day. Instead of antagonizing the Kremlin leadership, the speech convinced them that the wall had to come down and yes, when it did communism crumbled along with it. The foreign policy elite, smug and arrogant, would have prolonged the Cold War had they had their way.

More ;

The memorial, a 4.2-meter-tall bronze replica of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue built by Chinese students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was the brainchild of historian Lee Edwards and former ambassador Lev Dobriansky, who spent more than a decade raising nearly $1 million to complete the project on a site near the U.S. Capitol.
The dedication ceremony was held on the 20th anniversary of former President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech in Berlin in which he called on then-Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall that separated the city and had divided a continent since the end of World War II. Bush noted that the wall would finally fall two years later, liberating the people of Central and Eastern Europe and changing the world.
In all, as many as 10 million innocents perished at the hands of communism, Bush said, helping to make the 20th century “the deadliest in human history.”
“We’ll never know the names of all who perished, but at this sacred place, communism’s unknown victims will be consecrated to history and remembered forever,” he said.

VictimsofCommunism.org