Preview

Death to Capital Punishment

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1576 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Death to Capital Punishment
Death to Capital Punishment
Imagine that the European convention of human rights weren’t designed, written, amended and supplemented with Article 2, defending a human’s right to life and protocols 6 and 13 that abolishes the death penalty. Imagine bringing back the death penalty to the UK was a serious debate in the way that the UK would be able to bring back Capital punishment (CP) without having to break any legal binding documents like the treaties. In my very humble opinion, there aren’t any solid arguments for the death penalty that can’t be convincingly countered. The idea that government should take a life seems barbaric. Desmond TuTu said “Taking a life for a life isn’t Justice, it’s revenge”. There have been popular key talking points surrounding the CP debate; Costs to the government, morality, deterrence. I wish to discuss these same points with hopefully a fresh view.
The cost argument has been argued between pro and anti-capital punishment but most of the numbers seem to be in support of the anti-capital debate. An article that amongst other factors studied the cost of CP found that cost of CP annually is greater than an inmate living out a life sentence without parole. The article named; “Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature 's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle (2011)”
In California, more than $4 billion on capital punishment since it was reinstated in 1978 (about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out.
California spends an additional $184 million on the death penalty per year because of the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row, and legal representation. The study’s authors predict that the cost of the death penalty will reach $9 billion by 2030.

The Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (2008) quotes
"The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons


References: Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (2008) http://www.ccfaj.org/documents/reports/dp/official/FINAL%20REPORT%20DEATH%20PENALTY.pdf The European Convention on Human Rights http://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/EN/Header/Basic+Texts/The+Convention+and+additional+protocols/The+European+Convention+on+Human+Rights/ The Big Questions - Do Some Crimes Deserve The Death Penalty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4nm9Lu2fs
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Death Penalty Is Becoming More Expensive By Maurice Chammah
    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Death Penalty Is Becoming More Expensive By Maurice Chammah

    In “Six Reasons the Death Penalty is Becoming More Expensive,” Maurice Chammah addresses the growth in the cost of capital punishment within the United States of America and the main factors that contribute to this growth. Chammah predominantly traces the growth to the unpredictability regarding the length and verdict of a trial. Many death penalty cases remain intact for a long time before a decision is finally reached, and sometimes, even once a guilty verdict is reached, a verdict of capital punishment can be reversed. When an appeals court reverses a death sentence the county faces the cost of an entire additional trial and another round of appeals. In a murder and robbery trial in Randall County, San Francisco, it’s estimated that the…

    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Bill Richardson Keeping The Death Penalty Summary
    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Bill Richardson Keeping The Death Penalty Summary

    However, with necessary changes the death penalty can be a meaningful and just punishment. Richardson supports his decision of stopping the death penalty because he feels innocent lives are at stake if there is a mistake in the sentence of a person. However, according to Jeanne Woodford, the prosecuting attorney of Indiana, “there is no credible evidence to show that any innocent persons have been executed at least since the death penalty was reactivated in 1976”. Moreover, the article “A Message from the Prosecuting Attorney of Indiana” states that the most accurate judgment sentence in any system of justice ever created is death penalty. The death penalty judgment sentence has very little if any mistakes when it comes to sentencing the right person for a crime committed. Nevertheless, the death penalty is not perfect and is flawed in certain ways, such as the cost per prisoner, per year. The financial cost is staggering to take care of death row inmates. According to, the Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (2008) “The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California's current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually." However, this can be fixed by not…

    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Vincent Brother's Argumentative Essay For The Defense
    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Vincent Brother's Argumentative Essay For The Defense

    Capital punishment is believed to be less expensive than life in prison. However the average time on death row is 15.8 years and the annual cost in California for the death penalty system is $232million compared to $11.5 million for lifetime incarceration (DPIC, 2014).…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Johnny Frank Garrett's Argument Against The Death Penalty
    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Johnny Frank Garrett's Argument Against The Death Penalty

    Furthermore, there are serious economic consequences. Various state governments estimate that a single death penalty case, from the point of arrest to execution costs $1 million to $7 million per case. The million dollars spent on capital punishment cuts into resources for other community interests, such as schools, hospitals, public safety and…

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Keaton Capital Punishment
    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Keaton Capital Punishment

    This money comes out of our taxes. Cases without the use of death row costs roughly $740,00. Cases that do involve the death penalty costs around $1.26 million. In total, taxpayers pay $90,000 per year to pay for the cost of the death penalty. The fact that we are paying so much for something that we could go without is outrageous. We should be using this money that is going towards capital punishment for something more useful.…

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Why The Death Penalty Needs To Die Analysis
    • 171 Words
    • 1 Page

    Why The Death Penalty Needs To Die Analysis

    In his article Why The Death Penalty Needs To Die, Gillespie mentions that in California alone, $4 billion dollars was spent on administering death penalty cases between 1980 and 2012. That is a lot of money that was wasted on something so useless. In Here's Why We Need to Kill the Death Penalty, Senator Daylin Leach states how unaffordable it is to process, try, and carry out a death penalty sentencing. So much money is spent on the death penalty. Billions and billions of dollars are spent just to have the death penalty. The country is in debt enough as it is. The average case costs about $740,000. With cases that aim for the death penalty it costs around $1.26 million. It costs $90,000 dollars more in taxpayer money to manage a prisoner on…

    • 171 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Death Penalty
    • 1091 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Pros And Cons Of Death Penalty

    Citizens’ tax money is used by courtrooms to carry out the executions. According to the article, Judge McCartin Turns against Death Penalty by Gordon Dillow explains the execution of inmates is: “It's a waste of time and taxpayers' money.” Judge McCartin acknowledges that, "It cost 10 times more to kill these guys than to keep them alive in prison.” Unfortunately, D.P cases occur a lot since the courtrooms come up with erroneous jurisdiction over inmates’ cases: The judicial system spends taxpayers money in revising documents, evidences, and appeals. For instance, the book Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean compares the prisoners’ execution costs more than life imprisonment in the state of Florida: “the cost of an each execution is approximately $3.18 million, compared to the cost of life imprisonment for (40 years) about $516,000” (129). These quotes assimilate in clarifying that it is cheaper to hold the inmates alive in prison rather than execute prisoners and invest high amounts of money on…

    • 1091 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Life Without Parole
    • 116 Words
    • 1 Page

    Pros And Cons Of Life Without Parole

    According to JFA (Justice for All) estimates that life without parole cases will cost $1.2 million to $3.6 million more than equivalent to death penalty cases. In addition, Edwin H. Sutherland President of the American Sociological Society, argued that it’s not cheaper to keep a criminal confined, most of the time the prisoner will cost as much as a convict under death penalty, due to the care that has be given to the prisoners for all the years that they will be imprisoned. (Sutherland 1974) With time, life without parole cases are much more expensive than death penalty cases. Not only is much cheaper in the long run, but it keeps safe American citizens from murderers.…

    • 116 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Sociology Death Penalty
    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Sociology Death Penalty

    Study after study has found that the death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison. The high costs of the death penalty are for the complicated legal process, with the largest costs at the pre-trial and trial stages. The point is to avoid executing innocent people. The tremendous expenses in a death penalty case apply whether or not the defendant is convicted, let alone sentenced to death.…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Should Death Penalty Be Allowed
    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Should Death Penalty Be Allowed

    The death penalty uses an unnecessary amount of America’s budget. The amount of money we spend on the death penalty could be put to better use. “Death penalty cases are much more expensive than other criminal cases and cost more than imprisonment for life with no possibility of parole. A study in Kansas indicated that a capital trial costs $116,700 more than an ordinary…

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Texas Death Penalty Research Paper
    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Texas Death Penalty Research Paper

    In Texas, each death row case costs approximately $2.3 million dollars. The state has 300 people currently on death row, but still manages to have one of the highest murder rates in the U.S. In New Jersey, 500 police officers were laid off because of lack of funds. Even in Georgia 900 prison workers were laid off, because of money problems. Due to these money problems, when the budget crisis hit Florida the state released 3,000 prisoners early. This in turn threatened public safety. It is actually cheaper for prisoners to spend their lives in prison without parole rather than be executed…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Kill or Be Killed: the Death Penalty in America
    • 1462 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Kill or Be Killed: the Death Penalty in America

    One reason the death penalty is wrong is because it is just too expensive. On August 3, 2006, Diane Grey Davis, an avid blogger, researched this topic and posted a blog on the Greensboropeerpressure website showing the cost of execution versus the cost of housing an inmate for life. It said that in California, the death penalty costs taxpayers $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life. Also, in Indiana, the costs of the death penalty exceed the complete costs of life without parole sentences by 38%. In Texas, the death penalty costs on average $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years (Davis, 2006). Studies show that the cost of building a maximum-security prison cell is $63,000, which breaks down to about $5,000 a year in principal and interest. The annual cost to maintain an inmate in this cell is about $20,000 a year, which when combined, equal a total of $25,000 a year to hold an inmate in prison. An inmate serving a life term…

    • 1462 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Argumentative Essay: Should We Still Support The Death Penalty
    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Argumentative Essay: Should We Still Support The Death Penalty

    The cost to execute a person is much more than it costs to put the person in prison for life without a chance of parole. In California, a study shows that death penalty trials are more than twenty times as expensive as putting someone in prison for life without the possibility of parole. California spends over $184 million on the death penalty each year, and many other states follow suit. If the death penalty is discontinued, the cash used on it could benefit the families tremendously. Families could use this cash to obtain counseling and other assistance to help them put their lives back together. Also, remaining cash can be used in other public assistance such as education, drug and alcohol treatment, and child abuse prevention…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Life In Jail
    • 1589 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Life In Jail

    "The death penalty is much more expensive than life without parole because the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases". The process before being executed is much longer. In fact "Some prisoners have been on death row for well over 20 years"(Death penalty.org, 2008). This time on death row can vary, but usually it is more then 10 years (Death penalty.org, 2008). During that time of waiting on death row more and more money is being spent looking into the case to make sure everything is perfect and correct information is there. The amount of money spent on the person that is getting executed is over thousands more by the time the process is done. Executions cost "$2 million per person vs. $500,000 for life in prison without parole. If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, which costs millions less, more money, could go for things citizen really need. In fact; "the money saved could be spent on programs that actually improve the communities in which we live"(Death penalty, 2008). There are so many good things we could use the extra millions of dollars on including "education, roads, police officers and public safety programs, after-school programs, drug and alcohol treatment, child abuse prevention programs, mental health services, and services for crime victims and their families". All of this should be way more important in the grand schema of things. The state of California alone "could save $1 billion over five years by replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment." Having regular prisoners is so much cheaper. "California taxpayers pay $90,000 more per death row prisoner each year than on prisoners in regular…

    • 1589 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Death Penalty In California
    • 2701 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Death Penalty In California

    According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of North California, taxpayers pay 117 million dollars a year on death penalty inmates (Colon 4)! Generally speaking, that $117,000,000 costs way more than life in prison for these inmates.(Colon 4) Who could condone wasting this money? We spend all of this money on people who could care less about the rest of us. But what else could we do? These criminals at least deserve the chance to get off of death row. Only 13 people from 1978-2009 got executed and these 13 people spent between 9 and 24 years on death row (Colon25)! Also, keep in mind that 697 people make up the death row list. California spends so much money on death row inmates that it would make total sense to abolish the death penalty entirely. California owes at least 265 billion dollars (Nation)! Between public facilities and budget deferrals, California can not afford to squander money on something as unnecessary as the death penalty…

    • 2701 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics