The authors Andenaes, Lehtinen, van den Haag, and Berns contend that the major impact of the criminal law and its application is to socialize, educate, and moralize society rather than to deter crime. However, Yunkers argues that capital punishment influences non-capital crimes through deterrence and system overload. Despite the different processes involved all these scholars expect a significant inverse relationship between the level of use of capital punishment and rates for non-capital felonies. However, the present bivariate and multivariate analysis of capital punishment and index felony rates for 1950 and 1960 does not demonstrate this relationship. A significant negative relationship was not found between the level of use of capital punishment and murder, person crimes of negligent manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery or property crimes of burglary, grand larceny, and vehicle theft. 6 notes and 30 references