Quote:
| The only downside is that tax dollars must be allocated for the upkeep of these prisoners. |
Sorry to go on about this, but if you are referring to the US specifically, then this is not a valid argument. It costs considerably more to execute a prisoner than it does to imprison them for life. This is based on their time on death row vs general population in a maximum security prison. These costs could be reduced by shortening the appeals process (hence reducing the time on death row), but this would increase the number of "innocent prisoners ... being executed - which is absolutely not acceptable."
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I should give some sort of facts to back up what I have said. I can't find the original sources, but these two pages have information about death penalty costs.
World Policy (about half way down)
Amnesty USA
A brief summary is:
LA County: death penalty costs $ 2 M vs $ 1.4 M for Life Without Parole (LWOP).
Texas: $ 2.3 M for death, about three times the cost of LWOP.
North Carolina: death costs 2.16 M more than LWOP.
Florida: $ 3.2 M for death, $600 K for LWOP.
New York: death is about three times the cost of LWOP.
Similar studies in Kansas and Maryland give similar results.
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