In 1996, Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen published a short book, in which they attempted to explain why violent crime (specifically homicide) was more prevalent in the South than elsewhere in the United States. See Culture of Honor: the psychology of violence in the South, Westview Press: Boulder, Colorado 1996. Ultimately, Nisbett and Cohen suggested it was due to the “culture of honor” in the South; “that is, a culture in which protection of a reputation for toughness is highly important and in which insults cannot be tolerated.” Id. at 82.
Homicide Rate Per 100,000 By Region
The fact that the South has a higher rate of homicide than elsewhere is accurate. From 2001 through 2012, the South posted murder rates considerably higher than the national average. For example, in 2002, the South had 6.8 murders per 100,000 people; the national average at that time was 5.6 per 100,000. Texas, specifically, had a murder rate of 6 murders per 100,000 people. Texas, based on data from the past fifteen years, has never had a homicide rate less than the national average. (See: Report from Death Penalty Information, 2014 at: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state; and Federal Bureau of Investigation “Uniform Crime Report: Crime in the United States, 2012.”)
In 2011, the “Northeast” (PA, NY, NJ, VT, RI, NH, MA, ME, CT) had 3.9 murders per 100,000 people—a decrease from the previous year. The “South” (DC, FL, GA, DE, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV, AL, KY, AR, TN, MS, LA, OK, TX) had 5.5 murders per 100,000—an increase from the previous year. (2011 represents the basic pattern as far as the differential between murder rates for the Northeast and South over the past fifteen years.),
Subjective and Systemic Violence: correlation
Cultural theorists have posited a “triumvirate of violence,” wherein the violence inherent in a political or economic system is termed “systemic violence.” For example, “systemic violence” might include governmentally-enacted violence such as the death penalty, as that violence is part of the political/legislative system. On the other hand, crime is a type of “subjective violence.” For example, homicide is one manifestation of subjective violence.
Systemic violence and subjective violence are counterparts, insofar as systemic violence “must be taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be “irrational” explosions of subjective violence.” Zizek, Violence: six sideways reflections, Picador Press: New York 2008, at 2.
Killed By Killers Who Kill Each Other
Overall, States with the death penalty in place have a higher murder rate than States without the death penalty over the past fifteen or so years. (See: Report From Death Penalty Information Center, 2014.) This begs the question: is the systemic violence of the Southern political and economic system somehow connected to or correlated with the objective violence of the South?
Or, to put it another way: does the South have a higher homicide rate because it has the death penalty, or does the South have the penalty because it has higher homicide rate?
There is an 18% difference in the murder rate between States with the death penalty versus states without the penalty for the year 2011. This difference has been as high as 46% (2005), and the murder rate for non-death penalty states has consistently been lower than that in death penalty states. In fact, the difference in murder rates between death penalty versus non death penalty states has grown since 1990. (See Death Penalty Information Center statistics for 1990 to 2012 at: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates.)
What all this means, in effect—or at the very least, one way of looking at the correlation between the death penalty in many Southern States and the higher rate of murder in those states—is that the death penalty might be causative towards the higher homicide rate in the South. As a means of “systemic violence,” it operates as a kind of legislatively sanctioned homicide, which in turn might subconsciously impact what Nisbett calls the “culture of honor.”
Meaning, aggressive violence in the South may be, in part, precipitated by the aggressive violence of the death penalty in Southern states—i.e. we may have more homicide in the South because we have the death penalty.