The speeches of the different governors, to the Legislature of the state of New-York, commencing with those of George Clinton, and continued down to the the present time

Another crime-drop explanation is often cited in tandem with imprisonment: the increased use of capital punishment. The number of executions in the United States quadrupled between the 1980s and the 1990s, leading many people to concludeБЂ”in the context of a debate that has been going on for decadesБЂ”that capital punishment helped drive down crime. Lost in the debate, however, are two important facts. First, given the rarity with which executions are carried out in this country and the long delays in doing so, no reasonable criminal should be deterred by the threat of execution. Even though capital punishment quadrupled within a decade, there were still only 478 executions in the entire United States during the 1990s. Any parent who has ever said to a recalcitrant child, БЂњOkay, IБЂ™m going to count to ten and this time IБЂ™m really going to punish you,БЂ«knows the difference between deterrent and empty threat. New York State, for instance, has not as of this writing executed a single criminal since reinstituting its death penalty in 1995 ...»