World-wide Capital Punishment


Econopundit wonders

Wonder what these [capital punishmen figures] would look like per capita, no wordplay intended.

when referring to American vs Saudi capital punishment numbers. Although it is rather obvious, let's state the numbers just so everyone can see.





United States 65 (64 injection, 1 electrocution)--> 2.24e-7 per capita


Saudi Arabia (53 beheadings)----------------------> 2.18e-6 per capita





This uses 2003 estimates from the CIA World Factbook. For those who like big numbers rather than small ones, just take the inverse of the per capita numbers. Essentially though, what Econopundit is pointing out is that there's an order of magnitude between the two. However, it is good to remember that we're comparing ourselves to Saudi Arabia...yeah, not quite the civil rights giant that should make us feel that much better. But this does put the numbers into a little more context.