The death penalty.

[Khuutra]

badgenome said:

Khuutra said:

This is almost definitely not true.

The average cost for someone to be imprisoned in California - as I recall - is about 50,000 USD a year; as in you could send them to UC Berkley with room, board, books, and everything, and spend a lot less money.

Extrapolate that shit to fifty years.

Yeah, but if you factor in court appeals and how long it takes to actually getting around to executing someone (10 years or more)? I can see it.

Court appeals happen without the death penalty, too. Even assuming that a person sentenced to life only lives ten years logner in prison than does someone on death row (this is not the case), you also have to factor in increased cost of care as a person ages - once you hit your mid forties, you become a lot harder to take care of. Execution would have to be enormously, egregiously expensive in order to outweigh how huge the cost of holding a prisoner for the course of his life is.