Capital Punishment, 2016 - Statistical Brief

• NCJ Number: 251430
• Author(s): Elizabeth Davis, BJS Statistician; Tracy L. Snell, BJS Statistician
• Date Published: April 2018
• Publication Series: Capital Punishment
• Publication Type: Publication

Annotation

Presents statistics on persons under sentence of death at year-end 2016, including summary trends in the population, admissions to and releases from death row, the number of persons executed, and an advance count of executions in 2017.

Abstract

Presents statistics on persons under sentence of death at year-end 2016, including summary trends in the population, admissions to and releases from death row, the number of persons executed, and an advance count of executions in 2017. Data are from BJS's National Prisoner Statistics (NPS-8) series.

Highlights

• At year-end 2016, a total of 32 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) held 2,814 prisoners under sentence of death, which was 58 (2%) fewer than at year-end 2015.
• California (26%), Florida (14%), and Texas (9%) held nearly half (49%) of the nation's prisoners under sentence of death at year-end 2016; in 2016, Texas executed seven prisoners, Florida executed one, and California did not execute any prisoners.
• In 2016, the number of prisoners under sentence of death decreased for the sixteenth consecutive year.
• Twelve states received a total of 32 prisoners under sentence of death in 2016.
• Five states executed a total of 20 prisoners in 2016, with Georgia (9) and Texas (7) accounting for 80% of executions.