When men are soft on crime

The death penalty is a gender issue

The Supreme Court barred the use of the death penalty in individual cases that don't result in a person's death. States across the country are challenging that status quo. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“We’re taking The Argument to San Francisco! On May 13, Kelsey Piper and Jerusalem Demsas are debating a question that feels unavoidable right now: Is AI actually changing how science gets done, or are we in the middle of a very expensive illusion? Jerusalem is bullish; Kelsey is skeptical.

And you won’t just be watching. You’ll get to join in on the argument, too.

Join us May 13 at The Chapel from 7 to 10 p.m. Come argue with us! RSVP here.

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Welcome back to The Argument’s poll series, where we survey Americans on the issues everyone’s fighting about. Our last surveys have asked about the economy, gender issues, immigration, education and parenting, the lingering politics of COVID-19, immigration, AI, and free speech. The Argument’s full methodology can be read here.

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When polled on crime, women are generally less punitive than men — more supportive of rehabilitation and more open to redemption. On capital punishment, specifically, there is a longstanding gender gap, with men consistently more supportive than women.

This pattern aligns with preexisting intuitions around gendered behavior: the empathetic woman who pities the marginalized and misunderstood and the retributive man, steadfast and unyielding.

But there is something not quite right about the simple notion that men are tough on crime.

In our survey of 1,516 registered voters fielded from April 20 to 23, the conventional gender gap held up when the death penalty was abstract. Asked whether they support the death penalty for “serious crimes,” men were 11 percentage points more supportive than women. But when we asked about specific crimes, a different picture emerged.

Sixty-nine percent of female respondents agreed that the death penalty should be an option for child sexual abuse. Only 61% of men said the same, although 72% of them were in favor of capital punishment for “acts of terrorism.”

The gender gap also reverses for rape, with 56% of women and 50% of men supporting capital punishment as an option. Notably, the reversal is driven by men becoming less punitive, not women becoming that much more punitive: Compared to “serious crimes,” there is a four-percentage-point increase among women and a 13-percentage-point drop among men.

Punitiveness isn’t a stable trait. The context that seems to matter most is who voters picture as the victim and who they imagine being executed.

Since 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that capital punishment should be reserved only for cases that resulted in someone’s death, this debate has largely been moot.¹ But a growing number of states are seeking to overthrow that consensus.