The Death Of A Criminal

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the death penalty costs too much to carry out (Academic American Encyclopedia "Capital Punishment").
Yet, in 1976, the Supreme Court in Gregg V. Georgia declared the death penalty for murder is constitutional (AAE "Capital Punishment"). The death penalty is also fair and serves it justice -- surveyed police chiefs and sheriffs choose the death penalty as a primary method to combat violent crime (Montgomery 2-25-95). It cost less in the long run as well.
How does the economy benefit from the death penalty? First of all, the American economy has enough problems as it is. The government is trying to cut spending left and right. State and Federal prisons are overcrowded. What do these prisons have to do with the American economy? American tax money is used to support hard core criminals like murderers, rapists, etc. that are serving their sentence.
At the end of 1992 State and Federal prisons reached a record high of 883,593 prisoners. This record means that approximately 1,143 prison ...

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more expensive to execute a prisoner don't look at the overall picture. Suppose the Amount A equals the amount of money to support one prisoner per year ($22,000) and Amount B equals the cost of the execution (negligible). We are talking about paying Amount A times the nine years spent in jail plus Amount B for the execution plus the cost for new construction during the nine years (total is approx. $690,000), as opposed to paying Amount A times an average of 60 years the prisoner would spend in jail plus the cost of new construction during an average of 60 years (total is approx. $4,560,000). Even if the prisoner spent 20 years in prison the cost would be approx. $1,520,000.
How is ...

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