According to the Japan Statistical Yearbook, there were 1,334 homicides in Japan in 2001, and another source says there were 52 executions from 1981 to 2000. That's a rate of 2.7 per year, 1 execution per 494 murders.

According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, there were 16,000 murders in the U.S. in 2001, and 820 executions from 1977 to 2001, a rate of 34.3 executions per year, one execution per 466 murders.

The Statistical Abstract says thatthe US has a population of 285 million in 2001 and Japan had a population of 127 million. The US has 12 times as many murders, with only about twice the population, so the US murder rate is 6 times as high. Relative to the murder rate, though, both countries make about the same use of the death penalty.

Another way to look at it is in terms of executions per citizen. It follows from what I have just said that the U.S., with six times the murder rate, will also have six times the execution rate by this measure.

It's interesting to break the U.S. down regionally, though. Of the 820 executions, 256 were in Texas, 83 in Virginia, 53 in Missouri, 51 in Florida, and 48 in Oklahoma, a total of 491 for those states. All of those states except Missouri had murder rates in 2001 at or below the national level of 6 per 100,000 (Missouri was 7). Taking out the 37 million population of those states leaves 248 million, just about twice the population of Japan, and reducing the number of murders by 13% leaves the remaining US states with 14 thousand murders and 329 executions, 15.7 per year. That's 891 murders per execution.

In fact, there were only 81 executions from 1977 to 2001 outside of the Mason Dixon line. The population of the South was 100 million of the 285 million, so that means there were 81 executions for the remaining 185 million people. In executions per year per million people, the non-South US and Japan are almost exactly the same -- .0208 in the non-South US, and .0212 in Japan.

I would conclude that both Japan and the United States take murder more seriously than Europe does. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I suspect it is only in Europe that life is valued little enough that a mass murderer can get by with just life in prison. [in full at japdeathpenalty.htm]

To return to Eric Rasmusen's weblog, click http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/0.rasmusen.htm.