this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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It’s more expensive to execute a person on death row than to keep them imprisoned for life.
In the United States.
How can that be? I figure it costs a lot to keep a person in jail for a year. Multiply by 40. How is an execution more expensive than that?
Capital cases cost a ton more to prosecute and defend and there are a lot more rounds of appeals. When someone’s life is on the line, we jump through extra hoops as a society.
There's also the fact that dead people can't be used for their labor, so there's no offset.
Thank you for the explanation, that makes sense. I am glad that so much effort goes into (trying to) make sure they got the right guy.
For the record, I'm against capital punishment, but it does exist in some countries, so it is worth understanding.
Yea you really don't want it to be cheaper, because that gives an incentive for the government to execute people just to save some money. And in this society we know how that turns out.