Death Penalty: Economics

The death penalty in the United States has caused much controversy in terms of what rights we have in our government to take away or spare a life. Behind all of this controversy, there lies the question of whether or not it is cost effective to continue to imprison these death penalty cases or to just follow through with the prosecution and kill them. On this site below, it shows a specific portion dedicated just to the financial part of the death penalty in some of the states that says:

 

The financial effects of the death penalty:
-"A new study in California revealed that the cost of the death penalty in the state has been over $4 billion since 1978. Study considered pre-trial and trial costs, costs of automatic appeals and state habeas corpus petitions, costs of federal habeas corpus appeals, and costs of incarceration on death row. (Alarcon & Mitchell, 2011).
-In Maryland, an average death penalty case resulting in a death sentence costs approximately $3 million. The eventual costs to Maryland taxpayers for cases pursued 1978-1999 will be $186 million. Five executions have resulted. (Urban Institute, 2008).
-In Kansas, the costs of capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration. (Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).
-Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Based on the 44 executions Florida had carried out since 1976, that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each execution. (Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000).
-The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level. (Duke University, May 1993).
-In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).

The effects of the present financial crisis on the criminal justice system vary widely, but the common thread has been cutbacks in critical areas. In a report released in August of this year, the American Bar Association found that "the justice system in many parts of the United States is on the verge of collapse due to inadequate funding and unbalanced funding." The report went on to state that "the very notion of justice in the United States is threatened by a lack of adequate resources to operate the very system which has protected our rights for more than two centuries."

-New Jersey, for example, laid off more than 500 police officers in 1991. At the same time, it was implementing a death penalty which would cost an estimated $16 million per year, more than enough to hire the same number of officers at a salary of $30,000 per year. ·
-In Florida, a mid-year budget cut of $45 million for the Department of Corrections forced the early release of 3,000 inmates. Yet, by 1988 Florida had spent $57.2 million to accomplish the execution of 18 people. It costs six times more to execute a person in Florida than to incarcerate a prisoner for life with no parole.
-In contrast, Professors Richard Moran and Joseph Ellis estimated that the money it would take to implement the death penalty in New York for just five years would be enough to fund 250 additional police officers and build prisons for 6,000 inmates.
- Ten other states also reported early release of prisoners because of overcrowding and underfunding. -In Texas, the early release of prisoners has meant that inmates are serving only 20 percent of their sentences and re-arrests are common. On the other hand, Texas spent an estimated $183.2 million in just six years on the death penalty.
-Illinois built new prisons but does not have the funds to open them. It does, however, have the fourth largest death row in the country.
-Georgia's Department of Corrections lost over 900 positions in the past year while local counties have had to raise taxes to pay for death penalty trials."