🚀 go-pugleaf

erik@tera.com (Erik Hedberg) writes:

>Further clouding the issue is the fact that "life without parole" is
>*cheaper* than execution.  Some people might not agree with this, but
>this is what I was taught in a criminal law class in college.  You can
>do the math for yourself.  If it costs $40K/yr to house inmates, and
>about $100K to build a cell, and the "average" inmate in question is
>sentenced at age 27, lives to age 75, this comes to (75-27)*40K + 100K
>= $2.02M (in a new cell).  This is a lot, but the costs of appeals
>easily exceeds this.  Remember, government pays the prosecutors,
>defense attorneys, and the judges.  The figure we were taught (in
>1975) was about $10M for capital appeals to be exhausted.
>Streamlining the appeals process reduces the $10M, but it needs to be
>cut by 80% to match the $2M.

I've heard this many times before, but I'm not sure I buy it yet (not
that I believe it proves the death penalty to be right or wrong).  These
figures do not take into account inflation or the legal battles that
might be waged while the convict is in prison for 50 years.  Has anybody
thought to calculate and include these costs???
-- 
Steven A. Ward
The Boeing Company
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phone: (206) 662-0239