Death penalty advocates insist that the death penalty serves as a deterrence to violent crime, but do the statistics bear this out? This chart, which I prepared using data from the United States Department of Justice, suggests that there is no correlation between the number of people executed and the rate of violent crime. The period from 1980 to 1986 enjoyed a modest decline in violent crime that began prior to a sharp increase in executions. According to death penalty advocates, such a decrease in crime should have followed the increase in executions. I believe the decline was more the result of the robust economy during the years from 1980 to 1986. From 1986 until 1994 we see a gradual increase in violent crime, despite unabated growth in the number of executions. Clearly, executions did not deter violent crime during that period. Again, I believe that violent crime increased in correlation with the poor state of the economy during that period. And finally, from 1994 until 2001 we see a precipitous decline in violent crime, which again, appears to have more to do with the robust economy during that period than the rate of executions, which continued to rise sharply during that period.