Katilian on 12 July 2007
| mrstickball said: It's either imprison them at $40,000/yr for 20, to even 50 years (at a cost of $800,000-$2,000,000), or try to deterr it with death sentences. |
Umm, maybe you aren't aware how much it costs to actually execute someone. A quick google lead me to this page: http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html
"From this; the cost of keeping a 25-year-old inmate for 50 years at present amounts to $805,000. Assuming 75 years as an average life span, the $805,000 figure would be the cost of life in prison. So roughly it's costing us $2 million more to execute someone than it would cost to keep them in jail for life. This is just the dollar cost, the externalities will be discussed in a moment."
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=108 Also has more:
- The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases.
- The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases ($508,000 for death case; $32,000 for non-death case).
- The appeal costs for death cases were 21 times greater.
- The costs of carrying out (i.e. incarceration and/or execution) a death sentence were about half the costs of carrying out a non-death sentence in a comparable case.
- Trials involving a death sentence averaged 34 days, including jury selection; non-death trials averaged about 9 days.
So yes, while it is cheaper to execute someone compared to letting them rot in jail, the overall costs are much much higher.
