government appointed lawyers?

Question

i am doing a formal debate on capital punishment and i am PRO capital punishment. this position was assigned to me so please dont try to persuade me! anyways, we had our opening statements today and the other side claimed that it is more expensive to put someone through death row and this is my rebutal:

MONEY- “Is it more expensive to and put prisoners through death row than to keep them in regular prison?”

Does that really matter? Even if there were no people in the prison whatsoever, it would STILL cost money to keep it the prison open. As for lawyers, whether they are government appointed or hired by the convict, they are paid either way. Hired lawyers are paid to win, and government appointed lawyers are there to argue, they make a salary either way. Just because it might be more expensive would it really make any sense in throwing the whole idea away?

does this make sense, i really need help!!! advice- your opinion!?

Answer 1

Average is around 45K, and that does include the cost of administration, staff salaries, maintenence,etc... Average starting wage for a California Correctional Officer is around 60k plus a really kick butt benefits package, a Warden can make as much as 220k.
The majority of the problem is the gross mismanagement of the system...
Read these articles, then tell me it's the inmates at fault for the price tag.
SACRAMENTO (AP) - A urologist charged California's prison system $2,036 an hour to treat inmates. An orthopedic surgeon billed the state for 30 hours' work - for a single day.

The examples are contained in an audit released Wednesday that found rampant waste in how California's prison health care system spends money on outside doctors, nurses and laboratories.

The lax spending practices have cost California taxpayers millions, according to the audit by the state controller's office. Prison health care spending soared from $153 million in 2001 to $821 million this year - an increase of $668 million, or 437 percent.

"Waste, abuse and management deficiencies are rampant" in contracted health care services, state Controller Steve Westly said during a news conference.
Here, as if it were needed, is yet another costly indication that the state's prison system is out of control.

The latest report from the Office of the Inspector General focuses only on management of union release time, which is time that prison guards spend on union business. The report shows everything that is wrong with the 2001-2006 contract with the guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. It also shows the state's utter failure to do even the most basic accounting of time and money.

This failure, concludes the inspector general, has meant that the state's corrections department has "mismanaged millions of dollars in public resources."

First, the state pays the full cost of three prison guard union vice presidents, who are released from their prison jobs to work full time on union activities. Only two other state unions have this expensive perk. The state also pays for the 43 prison guard union chapter presidents to be released from their prison jobs for union activities one day a week...

But beyond that, this whole mess shows a corrections department that doesn't care about managing union time release among prison guards and doesn't budget for the costs. The money always comes, regardless of mismanagement. Fixing the contract won't fix that.

That takes political will, the one thing most needed and most in short supply.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/st...

One of the difficulties facing corrections departments around the country is that their directors don't keep their jobs very long.

The average tenure for prison chiefs is 2.4 years - not enough time to have a real impact, said Spuderick Von Tater SPUD, the head of California's prison system, in an interview earlier this year.

"I don't know that I can tell you exactly the right amount of time, but the one thing I do know that you can see from systems that are performing how people would like them to, albeit not perfectly: They had continuity in leadership," he said.

Three weeks later, SPUD resigned. He'd been on the job about two years.

Two months after that, his replacement also resigned.

For many, the revolving door at the top of the organization is the perfect symbol of California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, a prison system perpetually mired in scandal.

In the past two years alone:

The department overspent its budget by $1 billion.

The system's health care operations were taken over by a federal judge who cited dozens of preventable deaths and called the level of care "deplorable."



And probably my "favorite"...Sacramento -- California corrections officials allowed contractors hired to run drug abuse treatment programs in state prisons to go on taxpayer-funded shopping sprees that led to the purchases of electric guitars, plasma televisions, $26,000 camcorders and cars.

Even as the prison system faced annual criticism for overspending its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, contractors racked up big bills on all kinds of items that seemed to have little to do with helping prisoners kick drug habits, according to state documents.

In a department that has recorded spending deficits in each of the last eight years and which provides few rehabilitation programs for prisoners, interviews and documents show little oversight of substance-abuse treatment programs. A Chronicle investigation, aided by some documents given to the newspaper by a lawmaker who will hold a hearing on the matter Monday, found:-- A program at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga (Fresno County) spent $95,127 on items including two guitars, a digital piano, a portable stage, a camcorder and a digital camera at the end of the 2002-03 fiscal year, when Gov. Gray Davis made emergency cuts to school funding as the state faced a record deficit.

-- A contractor providing drug treatment in four prisons throughout the state was authorized to spend $500,000 on moviemaking equipment in the 2003-04 fiscal year, when the prison system was reporting a record $500 million deficit. The equipment included two camcorders valued at $26,750 each, two 50-inch plasma-screen televisions at $6,423 each, and two video camera lenses for $22,000 each.

-- The same contractor, Amity Foundation, took three California parolees and six counselors to Tucson in 2000 and put them to work painting, fixing shingles and repairing an air conditioner at an Amity-owned ranch. Four participants interviewed by corrections officials said they were told the foundation was preparing for an upcoming inspection.

The buying binges came at the end of fiscal years in which money had gone unspent, and, instead of sending the cash back into state coffers or hiring more drug counselors, prison administrators approved the expenses despite some staff objections.

"These are preposterous expenses of money,'' complained state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. "What we have is the ultimate abuse and affront to the taxpayers of this state.''

The contractors either justified their expenses as legitimate for the purposes of drug counseling, or could not be reached for comment.
If you think prisons are costing too damn much, you're right, but the blame belongs to the management and to politicians, not the inmates.

Answer 2

Capital punishment does cost more. And most of the extra costs have to do with the lead up to trial, the trial itselt and the appeals process. Once a death row is built, it is there. Your argument about the costs of keeping a prison open doesn't help or hurt your argument. Although prosecutors are paid either way, these cases take so much of their time, and they need so many others working with them, a death penalty case does impact the expenses of a District Attorney and the county. Defense attorneys are not on staff and to the extent lawyers competent to handled these cases are hired, the expense in that much greater. What does matter about the costs is that the extra money spent on the death penalty system could be spent on victims services, crime prevention including better salaries for our overworked policemen. The other side is definitely correct. What you can argue, and some have, is that even though the death penalty costs more it is a good thing.

Apart from moral reasons that support one side or the other is the risk of executing an innocent person. 124 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. Many had already served well over a decade. If the appeals process were speeded up we would certainly be executing innocent people.

Some people think that the problem about innocent people being sentenced to death can be solved completely with DNA. Actually less than 10% of homicide scenes have DNA. It is not a guarantee we will not make a tragic, irreversible mistake.

I don't know your personal opinion about the death penalty. If you decide to go with the facts (not just opinion) you would do much better supporting life in prison without parole. Here are some reasons why.

Life without parole is available in 48 states. It means what it says. It is sure and swift,both required for a punishment to deter others. The death penalty is neither. Life without parole and the death penalty incapacitate a criminal (keep him from reoffending.)

The death penalty is not a proven deterrent. Homicide rates are higher in states that have it than in states that do not. Again, many death penalty supporters acknowlege this, but still believe the death penalty is needed as retribution.

If you can advocate for life without parole as the better choice for the most serious crimes, you will be with an increasing number of Americans. According to a Gallup Poll, in 2006, 47% of all Americans prefer capital punishment while 48% prefer life without parole.

Answer 3

I think you should avoid being drawn into the Money issue.

It is ridiculious, and it has no place here.

Capital Punishment is a MORAL issue, not a monetary issue. Ask your opponents, "Would you support Capital Punishment if it were less expensive?"

This is an issue of JUSTICE, and ask them what sort of a price do they put on Jusitce? Ask them HOW can they put a price on Justice!

It it not a briar patch you want to go into, and there is no need to do so. The Anglo-American judical system is set up to achieve, as best it can, JUSTICE, regardless of the cost. Cost is not, and should not ever be, considered, much less an issue. That's why it is called "The Criminal Justice System" not "LawMart".

Their entire argument is not just ridiculious but offensive. We should aspire to having the best justice system in the world, not the best one money can buy.

Answer 4

opening with the hypothetical about no people in prison doesn't work for me. You should talk about the proper place for financial considerations in issues of justice--should we drop the death penalty because of the cost? (this just happened here in NJ, btw) or should we base the law on our shared sense of right and wrong, but try to mitigate costs within that law?

Answer 5

To constitute a Trimurti of three seculars i.e.INC,muslim advocate & Kasab.Anjali is communal.