Copious Scholarship Debunks Shin Bet’s Claim About Death Penalty’s “Deterrence”

In an attempt to advocate for the current death penalty bill before the Knesset, proponents invited a representative of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) to tell lawmakers that it now supports the bill in principle, marking a shift from its longstanding opposition. The crux of the Shin Bet’s arguments rested on their statement that “imposing the death penalty on terrorists can contribute to deterrence” of other murderous acts. Copious and academically rigorous meta-studies disprove this blatant lie that the Shin Bet uses to justify a measure that not only seeks to legislate vengeance for political ends, but, if enacted, also will further endanger Israelis and Jews everywhere.

The “Deterrence” Lie

The state of Florida, which led the United States with 19 executions in 2025, is the most appropriate place to turn at this pivotal moment to unpack the myth that the threat of the death penalty will deter criminals from committing more serious crimes. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Sunshine State’s flagship death penalty abolitionist organization, recently cited a 2017 Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) report that confirmed that “no evidence exists to support this claim [of the death penalty’s deterrence of crime], and the data suggests the opposite.” DPIC added that an “analysis of US murder data from 1987 through 2015 . . . found no evidence that the death penalty deters murder or protects police.” Instead, as DPIC continued, “the evidence show[ed] that murder rates… are consistently higher in death penalty states than in states that have abolished the death penalty.” The study demonstrated that the murder rate in death penalty states (6.646) was higher than the national average (6.424) and significantly higher than in non-death penalty states (4.788). A 2021 article by the reputable Florida newspaper, the Sun Sentinel, reported similar findings and determined that “[a]nnual murder rates are consistently higher overall in the death penalty states than in the 22 without capital punishment.”A more recent analysis by the Death Penalty Policy Project has concluded that “after 1,600 Executions, the Public and Police are Safer in States with No Death Penalty.”

Another means of disproving the death penalty deterrence myth is by analyzing data regarding mass shootings, which are, of course, endemic to the United States, where capital punishment remains legal in many jurisdictions. As of March 11, 2023, the Gun Violence Archive reported 106 mass shootings in 2023. Only 23 (21.7%) of those mass shootings were in non-death penalty states. Altogether, these 106 mass shootings have killed 157 people and injured an additional 415. Eighty-two percent of the fatalities were in death penalty states, and eighty-one percent of the injuries were in death penalty states. The Death Penalty Policy Project corroborated these findings in another recent publication, concluding that “the Death Penalty Does Not Deter Mass Shootings.” This data speaks for itself, underscoring how deterrence is a trumped-up fallacy when it comes to the death penalty.

The Death Penalty Would Incite Martyrs and Invite Murders in Israel

The pro­posed bill will not only fail to deter ter­ror­ism but will, in fact, incite and invite more mur­der­ous acts of ter­ror. Scholars have written for decades about capital punishment’s “brutalization effect;” namely, how the death penalty actually increases homicide rates rather than deterring them. Prominent criminologist William J. Bowers wrote about this execution byproduct in his seminal work “Deterrence or Brutalization: What is the Effect of Executions?” – a foundational 1980 study with Glenn Pierce analyzing New York State homicide data from 1907 to 1963, and a second scholarly article entitled “The Effect of Executions is Brutalization, Not Deterrence (1988),” which presented a comprehensive re-evaluation of the deterrence versus brutalization debate. Bowers’ research, particularly his 1980 article with Glenn Pierce, found that homicides typically increased by two to three incidents in the months immediately following an execution. His scholarship included various arguments. First, Bowers found that executions send a message that “lethal vengeance” is a socially acceptable response to a perceived wrong. Bowers also concluded that state-sanctioned killings diminish public respect for human life, “brutalizing” the population. Bowers and Pierce further demonstrated that potential murderers do not identify with the person being executed. Instead, they identify their own enemies with the executed criminal, seeing the execution as a justification for killing those who have wronged them. Ultimately, Bowers realized that capital punishment is an incitement to violence rather than a deterrent.

As the thou­sands of mem­bers of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Pen­alty” have main­tained, there is ample reason to apply this “brutalization effect” to Israel and to con­clude that the proposed death penalty bill would only entices would-be mar­tyrs to attack Israelis. A renowned com­ment regard­ing the well-estab­lished rela­tion­ship between the death pen­alty and the desire for mar­tyr­dom comes from the 19th-cen­tury writer Eliphas Levi. He demon­strated a keen under­stand­ing of these dynam­ics when he wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaf­fold may be honored and praised as the head of a mar­tyr.”

Applying Levi’s wis­dom to mod­ern-day Israel, it becomes clear that a man­dat­ory death sen­tence for Palestini­ans who murder Jews will almost cer­tainly increase the num­ber of attacks. Rad­ical Islam­ist ter­ror­ists – like those who per­pet­rated mass murder on Octo­ber 7, 2023 – cel­eb­rate mar­tyr­dom in anti­cip­a­tion of the sup­posed rewards await­ing them in para­dise. They want to die for their cause.

Their pref­er­ence is mar­tyr­dom in the actual act of killing, but if they can kill and then be placed on a ped­es­tal, lauded as her­oes facing the death pen­alty for their cause, then all the bet­ter – espe­cially if they become celebrit­ies in a world where so many hate Israel for how it treats non-Jew­ish cit­izens. If the death pen­alty is insti­tuted, such scen­arios would undoubtedly tran­spire.

Why would Israel want to encour­age poten­tial ter­ror­ists?

On this purely prac­tical level, the pro­posed legis­la­tion is insane. A far harsher pun­ish­ment is incar­cer­a­tion, which forces per­pet­rat­ors to con­front what they have done while endur­ing the con­stric­tions of a max­imum-secur­ity prison every day. As a former Jew­ish prison chap­lain, I can per­son­ally attest to this harsh real­ity.

The Shin Bet and other proponents of this bill maintain that execut­ing ter­ror­ists will pre­vent future hostage-taking in prisoner swaps. What they fail to recog­nize is that Israel can avoid this out­come simply by chan­ging the law to for­bid includ­ing any­one dir­ectly involved in murder in any future pris­oner exchanges, without excep­tion. Such legis­la­tion would solve the prob­lem without cre­at­ing new mar­tyrs around whose memory other ter­ror­ists would assuredly rally.

This perilous bill poses addi­tional dangers. If the Knes­set were to enact it – lead­ing to the uncon­scion­able stain of exe­cu­tions suc­ceed­ing to darken the moral fab­ric of Israeli soci­ety – anti­semitic extrem­ists would assuredly blame all Jews for their state-sponsored killing pro­gram, neatly fit­ting it into their warped view of Israel – and, by exten­sion, Juda­ism – as a so-called “death cult.”

Just as this bill jeop­ard­izes the safety and secur­ity of Jews across the globe, it also threatens to per­man­ently mar what remains of Israel’s moral stand­ing among the more than 70% of the world’s nations that have abol­ished the death pen­alty in law and prac­tice. In today’s volat­ile polit­ical cli­mate, which already imper­ils the rule of law in Israel, this issue fur­ther nor­mal­izes the invoc­a­tion of state viol­ence and widens the gap between mod­ern Israel and the cent­ral Jew­ish value of the invi­ol­ab­il­ity of life.

The mem­bers of L’chaim have out­lined, ad nauseam, mul­tiple addi­tional reas­ons why this death pen­alty bill is, by defin­i­tion, an abom­in­a­tion. L’chaim recently delin­eated these points in a Hanukkah post, enu­mer­at­ing in detail “8 Reas­ons to Vote Against the Death Pen­alty this Hanukkah.” These include the fact that the death pen­alty viol­ates the human right to life, always con­sti­tutes tor­ture, risks execut­ing the inno­cent, is racist in its applic­a­tion, and – from Adolf Hitler to Don­ald Trump to Ben-Gvir – has been used as a polit­ical tool, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns.

L’chaim has also illus­trated how Jew­ish tra­di­tion renders the death pen­alty vir­tu­ally impossible, and how many exe­cu­tion meth­ods are dir­ect Nazi legacies, includ­ing fir­ing squad, gass­ing, and lethal injec­tion.

Famed death pen­alty abol­i­tion­ist Elie Wiesel best artic­u­lated L’chaim’s stance when he said of cap­ital pun­ish­ment – in the shadow of the Holo­caust – that “death should never be the answer in a civ­il­ized soci­ety.” Israeli law­makers should heed Wiesel’s mes­sage and recog­nize that exe­cu­tions are not the answer today, and never should be. No false claim regarding deterrence – not even by the Shin Bet – can make the human rights abomination that is the death penalty kosher for Israel, or any civilized society.

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

Co-Founder: “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty” 

Advisory Board Member: Death Penalty Action