Truth Behind the Death Penalty

Some callous folk are not convinced that moral and humanist answers alone are enough to win the argument against capital punishment. Rather, they avariciously claim that money is far more important than a human life; keeping murderers and paedophiles, for example, behind bars is apparently costing the taxpayers far too much, when instead they could be executed and rid of. Alongside this viewpoint, the use of capital punishment is said to also be an effective means to free up space in our ever growingly crowded prisons.

The following is to factually demonstrate how the above fallacious arguments are incredibly ignorant to the truth of capital punishment; a particular focus will be on the death penalty system within the United States of America.

Firstly, it does seem that many people have the frighteningly common opinion that it is a waste of taxpayer's money to keep criminals, who have committed horrendous crimes, locked up for a life sentence. More to the point, why should they have to pay to keep such dark minded prisoners alive when there is no hope of rehabilitation?

The short answer is that the use of capital punishment is not as cost-effective as first thought:

‘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.
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.
The California death penalty system costs taxpayers $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life.’ [1]

With these examples only counting towards a few of the many figures that show the financial implications of capital punishment, it greatly appears that there is an extortionate amount to be paid in order to enforce the death penalty. Anyone who continues to claim that killing off prisoners is a less expensive method to keeping them in jail is horribly mistaken.

It is a vastly uneconomical decision to enforce capital punishment. Such excessive expenses spent on a defected system leads to tremendous opportunity costs - surely the education system deserves far more attention, rather than being so fervent to murdering prisoners.

It follows that anyone who is twisted enough to use such excessive costs must have an extremely valid reason for its use. Another viable argument? Surely it frees up space, in overflowing prisons.

But this claim also has no strength to it. A total of ‘46’ [2] inmates were executed with use of the death penalty in 2010 in the USA; this is compared to the number of current American prisoners: ‘1,404,053’[3]. As a percentage, this is only 0.003% of the prison population. Only executing 0.003% of inmates is not going to free up any space whatsoever.

It is logically understandable that, on the surface, by executing criminals it could prevent the huge costs attributed to an ever-expanding prison population, that countries like the USA suffer from. But this could not be further from the truth.

There is therefore no doubt that these conclusions show that capital punishment, when only looking at the facts, is a highly detestable penalty, which needs to be removed for good. It is a system that costs astronomical amounts, where it is more economical to keep prisoners under life imprisonment; it also a complete lie that this form of punishment frees any room in prisons.

When combined with morality and contradictions, capital punishment clearly falters and withers in the face of a strong, humanitarian civilisation.

[1]http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/FactSheet.pdf

[2]http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/exetab.cfm

[3]http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Prison_Count_2010.pdf