[quote=@Burning Kitty]The US still has the death penalty in many states.[/quote]

In theory. But when it happens behind closed doors, often ten or fifteen years after sentencing, any sociological effects it may have as a crime deterrent are lost.

If you want capital punishment to actually [i]work[/i] in deterring other would-be criminals, three qualities are necessary in the methodology: severe, immediate, and public. People have to see for themselves, with their own eyes, what will happen to them if they get caught after raping the charred corpse of the woman they killed. The death penalty is less effective today than it was when we were guillotining people in the town square, for all our cries of "barbarism" when describing those practices!

https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/57201/BurkhardtBrettSociologyDurkheimPunishmentPrison.pdf?sequence=4