4 ms·

That's only true because the cost of appeals is included in the cost of having somebody on death row. For the record, I'm very happy that people on death row g

That's only true because the cost of appeals is included in the cost of having somebody on death row. For the record, I'm very happy that people on death row get so many appeals. I'm very happy that some of those appeals are automatic (all states I'm familiar with automatically appeal any death penalty sentence to the state supreme court). But given that the average death row inmate lives 20 years or so in custody, and that the average life sentence prisoner lives two or three times that long, and assuming that the people on death row don't get incredibly expensive food, it seems that the only reasons for a difference would be increased security costs (are life sentence inmates less likely to try to break out?) or costs not directly related to jail, such as legal appeals. We could save a lot of money by simply denying appeals to inmates on death row, but I don't think that would be an improvement. If anything, the difference in cost between death row and life imprisonment suggests that life sentences aren't getting the same scrutiny that death sentences get, and we probably have more innocent people serving life sentences than awaiting execution.

kawakiole 11y ago
How on earth is the cost of a legal appeal not directly related to jail?
- maxlybbert 11y ago
  The statement that "putting people on death row costs more than putting them in prison for life" is incomplete. The complete statement is "under our current legal regime, including costs of various appeals, putting people on death row costs more than putting them in prison for life." Since the costs of appeals dwarfs all other relevant costs, it's just as true to say "under the current legal regime, appeals for death row inmate cost much more than appeals for life sentence inmates." That's a very different statement, and not necessarily something we want to fix. If we did want to fix it, we could either spend less money on appeals for death row inmates (make it much harder to get off of death row/get exonerated), or spend more money for appeals for life sentence inmates. Indeed, it might just be that we aren't doing everything we should to find wrongfully convicted inmates who weren't given the death penalty. But that's certainly not the message people seem to be trying to make with the statement. The message I've always heard was "it would cost less to put him in jail for life." Or "it would cost less to get rid of the death penalty altogether." The first message has less impact when you realize that the costs involved are nearly all about legal appeals, not about running a prison, feeding the prisoners, etc. The second message is provably false: in a regime without the death penalty, the resources currently used to get people off death row would be used to get people out of life sentences.

kawakiole 11y ago

How on earth is the cost of a legal appeal not directly related to jail?

maxlybbert 11y ago
The statement that "putting people on death row costs more than putting them in prison for life" is incomplete. The complete statement is "under our current legal regime, including costs of various appeals, putting people on death row costs more than putting them in prison for life." Since the costs of appeals dwarfs all other relevant costs, it's just as true to say "under the current legal regime, appeals for death row inmate cost much more than appeals for life sentence inmates." That's a very different statement, and not necessarily something we want to fix. If we did want to fix it, we could either spend less money on appeals for death row inmates (make it much harder to get off of death row/get exonerated), or spend more money for appeals for life sentence inmates. Indeed, it might just be that we aren't doing everything we should to find wrongfully convicted inmates who weren't given the death penalty. But that's certainly not the message people seem to be trying to make with the statement. The message I've always heard was "it would cost less to put him in jail for life." Or "it would cost less to get rid of the death penalty altogether." The first message has less impact when you realize that the costs involved are nearly all about legal appeals, not about running a prison, feeding the prisoners, etc. The second message is provably false: in a regime without the death penalty, the resources currently used to get people off death row would be used to get people out of life sentences.