Price of Death

Death penalty may, or may not be an effective crime deterrent. Different people will give different answers to such question, depending on their point of view (usually more "pro-life" and "pro-family-values" individuals are more "pro-death-penalty").

However, the monetary price of the death penalty system in US can be figured out pretty much objectively. To illustrate my points I will use only two States: California (based on Los Angeles Times article from 2005) and New Jersey (from New jersey Policy Perspectives, also 2005).

In California, during the 1978-2005 period (that is, since the death penalty was reinstated) , various state-funded institutions spent about $114 million a year on death penalty cases. That includes the parts of budgets devoted to trying and defending death penalty cases at the Attorney General, California Supreme Court, Office of the State Public Defender, Habeas Corpus Resource Center, federal public defender offices, and death row sections of California Corrections Department. At the same time 11 executions were carried out. For a cost of more that quarter billion dollars per execution. This is insane.

It costs about $200 thousand a year to hire and train a police officer. For $100 million a year California could provide 500 additional officers that would actually have impact on the community. Total budget of California Army National Guard and air National Guard is less than $100 million. Spending a quarter billion dollars per execution is, in itself, a criminal waste of money.

In New Jersey the situation is even worse. They spend, in average, $11 million a year on death penalty cases. And the total number of executions, since 1983, is 0. Zero. Talk about waste of money there.

It is not surprising that in such situation the death penalty is not much of the deterrent for criminals. In both California and New Jersey it is more likely for people on the "death row" to die of old age than to be executed. And for what a cost!

We need to make up our mind. If we believe the death penalty can be effective tool in the fight against crime, we need to reform our system. Sentence, appeal, second appeal, injection, and we are done. Or just abolish it altogether, even though housing criminals for years and years is not that cheap, either.

Either way, the colossal waste of taxpayer money should be stopped.