Through our human history, there has always been a punishment of the most heinous crimes. This punishment is the death penalty. In the United States, the death penalty is a legal way to punish someone by death for a capital crime. Now the death penalty is controversial in terms of ethics, but it is certainly not good economically. The death penalty is an extremely expensive process. In California, the cost of death row is "$114 million a year beyond the cost of imprisoning convicts for life".
California has only executed 13 people since 1976. This means that California on average pays 250 million dollars per execution. That is outrageously expensive given that these are criminals. Why should the taxpayers have to spend their hard-earned money on paying to kill a criminal?
Other people just wonder why it costs so much money to be on death row. It costs so much money because to convict someone and sentence them to death they need to be on death row for 15 to 20 years. This is the length of the extremely long appeals process. The process must be this long because under the law it is hard to sentence someone to death. There needs to be a second trial with new witnesses and additional costs. Along with more witnesses, they have to find more jurors and it is an especially long process because death row cases must be done more carefully.
Overall it would be beneficial economically to get rid of the death penalty so that taxpayers do not have to pay extra money to a criminal. When money is not spent on the death penalty the government can spend the money on schools or infrastructure. That would be more beneficial than killing a guilty man.
“High Cost of Death Row.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28mon3.html.
Especially in recent years, the death penalty has been put into action less frequently. For example, San Quentin Prison recently closed their execution room permanently. However, the burden of prisons on taxpayers extends past simply death row. America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and as you said a lot of the money spent on prisons could instead be spent on education, which, by having more members of society educated, could even reduce the amount of prisoners America has.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that it's more expensive to have someone on death row as opposed to having them in prison for life. You would think that death row would reduce costs because we're not taking care of an individual for their entire life. I know that there have been recent attempts to get rid of the death penalty, and this economic reason should be a good reason for it. I agree with Luke that not only do the people need to be educated in order to reduce crime, but they also need to be educated on the clear economic advantages/benefits of getting rid of it as well.
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