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Friday, December 16, 2005
Death Penalty is bad fiscal deal!
I was thinking about the recent excecution in California and it reminded me of some research I did this summer on the matter. Frequently, the Texas bloodlusters cite the terrible burden of cost associated with keeping convicts incarcerated for life. As if it was possible to morally end a person's life because they become too expensive. Hmmn, Terri Schiavo...don't go down that path Poppy. Well anyway I thought I would stir up a little debate with the following:
I am against the death penalty in principle. As a society we simply should not use killing to show we are against killing. With three hundred and forty five executions since 1982, no state, (or nation for that matter,) in the Western world imposes and carries out the death penalty more frequently or with greater celerity than Texas; this alone should give bloodthirsty and morally righteous Texans pause. This shameful record casts its ugly pall over the state and marks it as a place of intolerance and barbarity to both progressive Texans and death penalty foes around the globe. Beyond this moral argument there are more practical concerns like: it is easy to make a fatal mistake and kill an innocent person; the administration is imperfect and clearly biased against men, the poor, and people of color; there is no credible evidence that it deters murder and it is increasingly unaffordable to a fiscally challenged state. This latter is the most convincing argument for Texas’ abolition of the death penalty--it is a horrid luxury we can no longer afford!
Proponents decry the cost of maintaining a murderer for life in prison and insist that by committing the capital offense they have forfeited their right to life and they therefore should not become a cost burden to society for the rest of their days. (Why a robber, sex offender or drug trafficker but not a murderer should be kept in prison is never explained.) By this construction the issue boils down to a crass fiscal concern that is on its face offensive. We are, after all, talking about a life here! Surly there can be no amount of money that justifies our taking of life. But even allowing that there may be some pecuniary point that is admissible to the discussion, the facts mitigate to the opposite conclusion from the intuitive thought that an offender kept in prison for life will cost more than a swiftly executed inmate. In Texas each capital case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million, nearly three times the cost of imprisonment in a maximum security cell for forty years. The costs of litigation are burdensome (over $700M since 1982) and could be saved by simply doing away with the death sentence. In 1994 Richard Dieter, writing for the Death Penalty Information Center reached the same conclusion:
Recent studies of death penalty costs reinforce the existing evidence that the death penalty is becoming unmanageably expensive. Like a black hole, it absorbs vast quantities of resources but emits no light. Nevertheless politicians and much of the public are drawn to it in the hope of finding a quick fix to the crime problem. But as the actual costs of capital punishment become clearer, the public should be in a better position to judge the death penalty as they would judge other programs. If a program is highly cost intensive, given to years of litigious expense, focused on only a few individuals, and produces no measurable [beneficial] results, then it should be replaced by better alternatives.
The money wasted on evidence gathering, expert witnesses, prosecutors, defense attorneys, juries, appeals, courts, and finally the execution itself could be better spent in early education programs that would work to reduce the amount of violence within society and ultimately reduce or eliminate the need for such state sponsored barbarism. As former Texas Attorney General, Gregg Maddox has observed, “Life without parole could save millions of dollars.” He continued, “It’s cheaper to lock ‘em up and throw away the key . . . as violent crime continues to escalate it’s something to consider.” Some argue that the escalating medical cost of an aging prison population would tend to wash out this advantage over time but the medical standard of care is certainly different for a condemned convict than it would be for ordinary citizens. The standard can be set anywhere the Legislature, in its wisdom, chooses. There would be no need to use life prolonging best practices so long as palliative care were provided. Bottom line to all you Conservatives out there, we can't afford to be barbarians even if our baser instincts are screaming for revenge.
I am against the death penalty in principle. As a society we simply should not use killing to show we are against killing. With three hundred and forty five executions since 1982, no state, (or nation for that matter,) in the Western world imposes and carries out the death penalty more frequently or with greater celerity than Texas; this alone should give bloodthirsty and morally righteous Texans pause. This shameful record casts its ugly pall over the state and marks it as a place of intolerance and barbarity to both progressive Texans and death penalty foes around the globe. Beyond this moral argument there are more practical concerns like: it is easy to make a fatal mistake and kill an innocent person; the administration is imperfect and clearly biased against men, the poor, and people of color; there is no credible evidence that it deters murder and it is increasingly unaffordable to a fiscally challenged state. This latter is the most convincing argument for Texas’ abolition of the death penalty--it is a horrid luxury we can no longer afford!
Proponents decry the cost of maintaining a murderer for life in prison and insist that by committing the capital offense they have forfeited their right to life and they therefore should not become a cost burden to society for the rest of their days. (Why a robber, sex offender or drug trafficker but not a murderer should be kept in prison is never explained.) By this construction the issue boils down to a crass fiscal concern that is on its face offensive. We are, after all, talking about a life here! Surly there can be no amount of money that justifies our taking of life. But even allowing that there may be some pecuniary point that is admissible to the discussion, the facts mitigate to the opposite conclusion from the intuitive thought that an offender kept in prison for life will cost more than a swiftly executed inmate. In Texas each capital case costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million, nearly three times the cost of imprisonment in a maximum security cell for forty years. The costs of litigation are burdensome (over $700M since 1982) and could be saved by simply doing away with the death sentence. In 1994 Richard Dieter, writing for the Death Penalty Information Center reached the same conclusion:
Recent studies of death penalty costs reinforce the existing evidence that the death penalty is becoming unmanageably expensive. Like a black hole, it absorbs vast quantities of resources but emits no light. Nevertheless politicians and much of the public are drawn to it in the hope of finding a quick fix to the crime problem. But as the actual costs of capital punishment become clearer, the public should be in a better position to judge the death penalty as they would judge other programs. If a program is highly cost intensive, given to years of litigious expense, focused on only a few individuals, and produces no measurable [beneficial] results, then it should be replaced by better alternatives.
The money wasted on evidence gathering, expert witnesses, prosecutors, defense attorneys, juries, appeals, courts, and finally the execution itself could be better spent in early education programs that would work to reduce the amount of violence within society and ultimately reduce or eliminate the need for such state sponsored barbarism. As former Texas Attorney General, Gregg Maddox has observed, “Life without parole could save millions of dollars.” He continued, “It’s cheaper to lock ‘em up and throw away the key . . . as violent crime continues to escalate it’s something to consider.” Some argue that the escalating medical cost of an aging prison population would tend to wash out this advantage over time but the medical standard of care is certainly different for a condemned convict than it would be for ordinary citizens. The standard can be set anywhere the Legislature, in its wisdom, chooses. There would be no need to use life prolonging best practices so long as palliative care were provided. Bottom line to all you Conservatives out there, we can't afford to be barbarians even if our baser instincts are screaming for revenge.
