It’s more expensive per year, I don’t know if that adds up to costing more for the entire length of their stay since the average prisoner is on death row for 15-20 years before their execution but I bet it does. In California, for example, they were spending $85k per year on death row inmates compared to $45k per year on inmates sentenced to life in prison. And inmates were on death row for an average of 20 years before being executed...I can’t find a number on how long those sentenced to life without parole lived in jail, but it would have to be more than 37 years just to break even. Considering an inmate’s life expectancy drops two years for every year they spend in jail, I really doubt it’s that high. And that’s after the trial and appeals process, which is three times more expensive for death penalty cases. And only about 25% of those sentenced to death ended up actually being executed, the rest were either overturned/commuted or the prisoner died of natural causes first. So all that extra money was unnecessarily spent about 75% of the time. We’re talking billions of dollars that could be saved if every death penalty case was a life without parole case instead.
What is your stance on “Death Penalty”?
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It’s more expensive per year, I don’t know if that adds up to costing more for the entire length of their stay since the average prisoner is on death row for 15-20 years before their execution but I bet it does. In California, for example, they were spending $85k per year on death row inmates compared to $45k per year on inmates sentenced to life in prison. And inmates were on death row for an average of 20 years before being executed...I can’t find a number on how long those sentenced to life without parole lived in jail, but it would have to be more than 37 years just to break even. Considering an inmate’s life expectancy drops two years for every year they spend in jail, I really doubt it’s that high. And that’s after the trial and appeals process, which is three times more expensive for death penalty cases. And only about 25% of those sentenced to death ended up actually being executed, the rest were either overturned/commuted or the prisoner died of natural causes first. So all that extra money was unnecessarily spent about 75% of the time. We’re talking billions of dollars that could be saved if every death penalty case was a life without parole case instead.