The Death Penalty - The Economics of Execution

In a previous blog post I outlined my objection to the death penalty based on the fact that it is an absolute penalty imposed by an imperfect system.  Now allow me to make a slightly more mercenary argument.  It is far cheaper to keep a person in jail for his or her natural life without the possibility of parole than it is to execute him.

Most Americans refuse to believe this, but the facts are incontrovertible.  The cost of sentencing and ultimately executing a person is, without exception, in every state with a death penalty, 10’s of millions of dollars per year more than keeping them in prison for their entire life! 

While the figures are hard to compare on a state-to-state basis, there are some examples to illustrate my point.  The State of Florida, where I live, would save approximately $51 million dollars per year if it stopped executing people; California, $90 million; North Carolina, $11 million and the list goes on and on.  Google it sometime and see what you get.  New Jersey and Illinois have both abolished the death penalty; New Jersey for the sole purpose of saving money, Illinois because the administration of the death penalty had become so flawed.   They were afraid they had already executed, or soon would execute, an innocent person, but they also figured out what it was costing them to impose the death penalty, and it was way too much, so they did away with it.

In this day and age of economic hardship, the math makes the decision.  Lock ‘em up, throw away the key and spend the difference on things like: more cops on the street, better crime detection techniques and building more jails and prisons to house prisoners that otherwise have to be released due to overcrowding.  You might want to try some drug treatment programs and some education programs aimed at preventing recidivism while you’re at it, but I recognize that is not popular among the true believers of an-eye-for-an eye justice.

In this country, 139 men have been released from death rows on the grounds of innocence.  Do we really want to make it easier to execute people?  Do we really want to make it just a little easier to execute an innocent person in a system that we is absolutely, positively proven to be imperfect? 

I have heard the arguments and the jokes about the death penalty.  One of my favorite comedians, Ron White, describes how many states are abolishing the death penalty while his state, Texas,  “is putting in an express lane”, limiting appeals to reduce the amount of time people spend on death row before being executed.   It is far too serious a matter to be joked about.  The point is, how can any thinking, feeling human being propose that we reduce the protections already in place in a system that would have resulted in the death of 139 innocent men had those protections not been in place?  We managed to convict those men in spite of their innocence and, but for the appellate process (and at times in spite of its already flawed nature), these innocent men would be dead.

If none of the moral, ethical or legal arguments work for you, no problem; how about the fact that it just plain old costs less to keep them in prison until they die than kill them?   I propose to abolish the death penalty because it could result in innocent people being killed and there is a cheaper alternative.  Not good enough; next blog entry on the death penalty, even more reasons.