• moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    Then it’s still a bad idea because of the literal cost to taxpayers.

    Life in prison is $70,000 per year (paid by taxpayers, of course).

    The legal battle around the death penalty is around $1.12 million, also paid around taxpayers

    https://www.cato.org/blog/financial-implications-death-penalty

    That’s 14 times more expensive.

    There are tons of things I would see the state spend money on rather than literally killing people. In the case of this, maybe mental health help for the victims.

    • astral_avocado@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Well one way to lower it is to settle law around the death penalty it seems. And they attribute part of the cost to battling chemical manufacturers, which could be moot with how cheap and easy it is to acquire nitrogen or even carbon monoxide.

      Also if it’s 70,000 a year to house an inmate… if an inmate is jailed for 20 years before death, total cost is 1.4 million. If an inmate is jailed at 20 and lives for another 60 years, that’s 4.2 million.

      So taking out a very young inmate would theoretically save the state about 3 million if they live until a natural age. Ted Kaczynski lived until 81 and absolutely deserved death.

      • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        Well one way to lower it is to settle law around the death penalty it seems

        Or you could just not kill people.

        Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present system ($137 million per year), the present system after implementation of the reforms … ($232.7 million per year) … and a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty ($11.5 million).

        From amnesty USA. https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost/

        Ted Kaczynski lived until 81 and absolutely deserved death.

        And he did die. Does that not satisfy you?

        Kidding, but it’s not a matter of deserves. It’s about the states power in relation to their citizens. The state shouldn’t have the power over life and death, because power corrupts. Cases like this: https://innocenceproject.org/melissa-lucio-9-facts-innocent-woman-facing-execution/

        The poor woman was interrogated for 5 hours straight by police into confessing her “crime”, while pregnant with twins, after which she was sentenced to death (still alive btw, lawsuits still ongoing and sucking up taxpayer money, even 13 years later.). One of the influential things in her death was the District Attorney who was attempting to be reelected on a “tough on crime” platform.

        Cameron County D.A. Armando Villalobos was running for re-election and seeking a “win,” and is now serving a 13-year federal prison sentence for bribery and extortion.

        Of course, you made an argument about “what if we require really, really hard evidence”… but what evidence is greater than a confession? What if evidence is fudged? There can never be a guarantee, and we should design our systems to account for human error… or malice.

        Prison should be a place to rehabilitate people first, and a place to remove dangerous people from society second. Not a political platform, like the death penalty is so often.

        The death penalty is the ultimate form of virtue signaling. An expensive way to remove someone from society, when life in prison would have the same effects, relatively. Everybody dies eventually, no need to waste money on killing people early when we could be spending money on keeping people alive.