WASHINGTON -- A new report says there is no reliable research on whether the death penalty has any effect on the murder rate, more than 35 years since the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of executions in the United States.

The National Research Council report says all the studies on the possible deterrent effect of the death penalty suffer from fundamental flaws. The report identifies problems that include not taking account of the effects of alternatives to death sentences or insufficiently weighing how killers assess the risk of execution.

The authors of the new report say they are disappointed to reach the same conclusion as a 1978 study. They say their evaluation of the existing research does not favor either side in the long-running debate about deterrence and the death penalty.

this is sort of a big duh, seeing as how we've known this for like 35 years, but whatever.

to be serious, what actual deterrents are there for crime? community policing seems to work to some extent but that term is very broad and general. there's also reintegrative sort of justice like what braithwaite suggests with the shaming. so obviously the prison industrial complex is going nowhere and all of the alternatives courts (drug courts, mental health courts, treatment centers) are just part of that same problem. what do we do?????