keeping a prisoner in jail or sending them to death, which is more expensive?

Question

me and my roommate argue on which is expensive. she says sending them to their deaths is more expensive then keeping the prisoner in jail. which one is more expensive?

Answer 1

The death penalty is EXTREMELY expensive to taxpayers. Keeping a prisoner in jail for life is relatively cheap, although you'll hear figures that are completely blown out of proportion, like "30,000 per year per prisoner." Utter nonsense. The right to due process means that every prisoner exhausts many appeals before being executed, and the burden on taxpayers is enormous. We're talking about expensive attorneys, transport, court costs and fees, fines, and mountains of paperwork the size of your house. Not to mention the inevitable lawsuits that come with death penalty cases. Your roomate is correct.

Answer 2

Everything I have ever read (except just people's opinions) agrees with your roommate. Death-penalty cases are absurdly expensive; keeping a prisoner "only" costs about as much as having a kid in college - so unless the prisoner is going to live to be several hundred years old, feeding them in prison is a real bargain compared to executing them.

A bit off topic - there have also been statistical studies that show consistently that when states adopt the death penalty, their murder rates go up at a much faster rate than neighboring states that do not have the death penalty.

Answer 3

In the short term, sending someone to death is more expensive because of the appeals process. But over time, life in prison becomes more expensive (depending on how long the person lives).

Answer 4

Sentencing a prisoner to death is often more expensive, because if a defendant exhausts all available appeals, the legal process takes many years and operates at a significant cost. And of course, they are not sentenced to death immediately, but are incarcerated for extended periods of time before their eventual execution, an expensive act in itself.

Answer 5

It boggles the mind that ppl debate the value of a human life. I'm opposed to the death penalty on moral principals. Especially in the US, where everyone is supposed to be equal. My ques. is, would a poor black man in Mississippi receive the same defence as O.J.Simpson. When Bush was govenor of Texas, there were many cases where he refused DNA testing, because of the expense. China & Saudi Arabia, the only 2 countries that execute more ppl than the US, do not surprise me, but where the US is suppossedly the leader of the Civilized world makes you wonder.

Answer 6

We have talked about this in my classes all the time. Most of the time everyone agrees that sending the person to death is more expensive.

Answer 7

unequivocally, the death sentence. it is because the convicted gets TONS of appeals to file. after all, it's a death sentence so of course, he/she wants to do whatever possible to avoid that. appeals take an enormous amount of time and money, all while the convicted sits in jail anyhow. that's why a lot of times, judges/juries, when given other sentencing options, will avoid the death penalty PRECISELY because they know it's a LONG appeals process so closure won't happen for the victim(s) in the meantime.

Answer 8

The whole thing depends on how many appeals are filed by the prisoner sentenced to death. I don't know if there is an equation to do this...

Answer 9

Usually sending them to death is more expensive. Alot more.

Answer 10

if the prisoner was give the death by lethal injection and he is still waiting then that is way more expansive than keeping them in prison.