Social Policy Bonds blog: Saving lives by capital punishment?

26 January 2007

Saving lives by capital punishment?

Nearly 30 convicted killers released from jail over the past 10 years have gone on to kill again, according to Home Office figures released yesterday. Convicted murderers who were set free to kill, [London] ‘Daily Telegraph’, 26 January

Along with most of my generation I have an instinctive horror of capital punishment. I wonder though just how rational is that visceral feeling? The process is undoubtedly distasteful, but much of my own disquiet centres on the possibility of a government executing an innocent person. This probably would happen (and has happened) but, as the article cited attests, no less real are the innocent people killed by people who would probably have faced capital punishment if it were applied. If one of our high-priority goals then is to save innocent lives, perhaps there is a case for restoring capital punishment for convicted murderers?

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

13 June 2018: my short article Make Social Impact Bonds Tradeable, appears on the website of Alliance, a magazine for philanthropy and social investment.

25 May 2018: a short article on Social Policy Bonds and their possible application in India, appears on Market Express (India). It is by Dr Ashok V Desai and titled Incentivizing welfare.

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.

18 April 2012: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, mentions Social Policy Bonds in his new book Finance and the Good Society. He also mentions the concept in a Huffington Post article. It's the eighth of his Ten Ways Finance Can Be a Force for Good in Society, and is also mentioned in a short profile piece about Professor Shiller.