The Geography of the Death Penalty

GeoCurrents has an interesting article on the geography of the death penalty in the US. Most people are aware that Texas has executed the most prisoners since 1976. GeoCurrents does a pretty good job of succinctly detailing a few other geo-facts about the death penalty. They detail the current geography of laws, which are sometimes complex. They detail the complex geographic relationship between murder rates and the death penalty. Finally, unsurprisingly, they detail the relationship between national politics and death penalty policies (although it’s a touch odd since they themselves point out state political leanings have a stronger influence on death penalty laws than national ones). I really enjoy short pieces like this that somewhat catalog the issue with maps and GeoCurrents does a good job of showing geographic relationships of current issues.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t do a quick shout-out to GIS.Com’s Twitter feed (@GISdotcom), since I saw this article on their feed. Check it out if you’re a Twitter user and want to see links to some great GIS articles around the web!