The Death Penalty: Tough love 死刑：严厉的爱

　　Juries acquit if sentences are harsh. 陪审团宣判是否裁决过于严厉。

　　Though no one has been executed in Britain for over 50 years, until 1998 someone convicted of high treason or “piracy with violence” could in theory be put to death. 尽管英国已超过50年没有处死过一位犯人，但直到1998年有些犯有严重叛国罪的以及暴力海盗行为罪的罪犯理论上来说都可以被判处死刑。

　　The law is now clearly against capital punishment, but Britons are not. 如今法律明言禁止死刑可英国人却不完全反对。

　　Fully one-third would like the death penalty to be brought back; the leader of the populist UK Independence Party has suggested a referendum on the matter. 整整三分之一的英国人支持恢复死刑；英国独立党民粹主义领袖建议就这个议题进行公投。

　　Yet research presented at this week's Royal Economic Society conference suggests that if you really want to be tough on criminals, killing off capital punishment makes sense. 然而公布在本周皇家经济学会议上的研究表明如果你真的想让罪犯获得严厉惩罚，废除死刑才是行之有效的方法。

　　Anna Bindler and Randi Hjalmarsson, both of the University of Gothenburg, examined over 200,000 cases from the Old Bailey criminal court in London from 1715 to 1900. 来自哥德堡大学的Anna Bindler 和Randi Hjalmarsson查阅了伦敦中央刑事法庭(Old Bailey)自1715至1900年的超过二十万起案件。

　　During this period capital punishment was abolished for many offences, from counterfeiting money (in 1832) to robbery (in 1837) . 在这段时期，针对许多违法行为废除了死刑，包括制造假币(1832年)和抢劫(1837年)。

　　Making the necessary statistical controls, the authors looked at the change in the likelihood of conviction for offences that were no longer capital. 通过这些必要的统计管理，作者发现：由于一些违法行为将不再判处死刑，使得定罪率发生了变化。