4 ms·
I look at it from a financial standpoint. When someone does something this vile, we (the people, by the courts) determine that they shall no longer have a righ
by vaporstun 17y ago
I look at it from a financial standpoint.
When someone does something this vile, we (the people, by the courts) determine that they shall no longer have a right to their life. Whether that be by ending it via capital punishment or by keeping them incarcerated forever, they essentially no longer have a right to their life.
It costs ~$48,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated (at least in MA where I am: http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-senate-bill-no-2210 http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-se...)
If a court determines that someone will no longer have a right to their life and their remaining lifespan is, for example, 40 years, we will spend somewhere on the order of $2,000,000 to keep them incarcerated for their lifetime.
Of course, that assumes the value of the dollar is constant (it isn't) and that the price of keeping this murderer in a maximum security prison is the same as the average cost of keeping someone incarcerated. (it isn't)
When we are locking the door and throwing away the key, why not save the $2,000,000 keeping someone alive who we've deemed has no right to life anyway?
- Retric 17y agoWhen you include the cost of appeals etc we spend more than that (on average) actually killing someone. In the old days of trial > hanging your argument was more reasonable, but we also killed more innocent people back then.
- aarongough 17y agoAre there any hard stats available on this sort of thing?
- Retric 17y agoThis is probably biased, but it lists several study's. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty
- aarongough 17y agoThank-you! Always nice to have some figures!
- smallblacksun 17y agoThat's just an argument against our current court system. We allow virtually unending appeals, even with no new evidence or reason for believing that the earlier trials/appeals were somehow unfair. Some states have (or had) mandatory appeals for capital cases, even when the defendant plead guilty and didn't contest the death penalty.
- yan 17y agoIf a new method of testing evidence appears and the alleged criminal is cleared of charges, you can let them out of the prison. You can't un-kill them. edit: I heard of countless cases of young black men being incarcerated for murder in Texas in the 60's with police going quite out of their way to obstruct the justice process.
- aarongough 17y agoI agree that's definitely worth consideration. I am nowhere close to being an expert on these things but I would have thought that most of the big technological leaps in the justice system are probably behind us. Fingerprinting, DNA matching, fibre analysis, ballistics... All of these things are pretty well established now. I agree that a lot of cases got turned on their head when DNA matching became available, but what technologies do you envision providing the same sort of disruption in the future?
- yan 17y agoIt doesn't always have to pivot on technology -- there will always be overzealous DA's and corrupt judges. Once again, I'm not for or against capital punishment, nor have I done sufficient research to form an opinion, but I can just imagine the Kafkaesque hell an innocent man or woman can be put through to be put on death row.
- aarongough 17y agoYeah, I can sympathize with that. I definitely would not want to be in that situation. I'm sure there's a workable compromise in there somewhere. I definitely think that most countries need to think about the crimes that they imprison people for. Imprisonment is super expensive partly because it's used so often. If only serious criminals went to prison, the social impact of imprisoning someone would be much greater and the overall cost would be lower...
- ShardPhoenix 17y agoBrain-scanning based lie detectors with high accuracy.
- barrkel 17y agoApart from wrongful convictions resulting execution, death penalties are also very expensive, as the costs of due process through all the appeals have to be paid.