Abolish the DP Now, and Save the Budget
It just doesn’t make any sense.
However you personally feel about killers is kind of beside the point. We don’t write laws to satisfy our need for vengeance; we write laws to protect and benefit society. Looked at in that context, the death penalty is absolutely useless. States with death penalty laws on the books all have higher murder rates than states without the DP, the people on Death Rows nationwide are disproportionately poor and minority, and in screwed up executions from Florida to Ohio, the methodology we’re using has been proven to be cruel to the point of barbaric.
Oh, and it’s killing state budgets, to boot. I know that here in Ohio, we really ought to be spending state money on Ohio, instead of on torturing inmates. As a matter of fact, nationwide we could find a lot better use for the hundreds of millions of dollars we’re spending on this useless, barbaric process.
States could save hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating the death penalty, according to a report released today. The report, which includes a national survey of police chiefs, was compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that researches capital punishment.
“Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis,” cites recent efforts by Kansas and other states to abolish the death penalty for financial reasons.
While the center doesn’t specify a position on capital punishment, it has been criticized as being antideath penalty.
After the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty in 1972, the high court allowed states to seek it for certain crimes four years later. Kansas didn’t reinstate the death penalty until 1994.
The study says that as government budgets wane, many states spend money on seeking the death penalty, while few actually carry out executions.
The El Dorado Correctional Facility has nine inmates awaiting death sentences. Kansas hasn’t executed anyone since 1965.
“In a time of painful budget cutbacks, states are pouring money into a system that results in a declining number of death sentences and executions that are almost exclusively carried out in just one area of the country,” the report said.
The death penalty also ranked last in the survey of police chiefs as a tool for fighting violent crime.
A poll of 500 police chiefs, selected at random, found they preferred putting resources into hiring more officers and spending money on drug and alcohol abuse as better ways to reduce violent crime.
Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams said he wasn’t surprised by the findings.
“The focus on more police officers and crime prevention programs sometimes get lost in the discussion,” Williams said. “Those are things on the front end, rather than the back end.”
But Williams also said that cost analysis of the death penalty concerns him.
“What price do you put on a human life?” he said. “That’s also something you have to look at, especially in getting justice for the families of victims.”
Nearly seven of eight police chiefs surveyed, however, said the death penalty was a political issue. The poll showed 69 percent agreed with the statement, “Politicians support the death penalty as a symbolic way to show they are tough on crime.”
And that is the ONLY reason there is a DP. Balless politicians trying to prove their “toughness” by sending people off to die. The most famous “tough guy” in this regard was Chimpy the Texecutioner, who went on to show us all how tough he is by sending thousands of Americans off to die for nothing in Iraq.
Needless to say, I’d never vote for a faux-tough son of a bitch just because he signed death warrants, or sent people to Death Row. Neither should you.
Tags: abolition, Death Penalty, economy, insanity
October 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I’m with you 100% on this one, JR. Pf Repuglicans are ‘pro life’ why are they so in love with war and vengeance? I guess that makes them the ‘pro death’ party.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I am all for abolishing it. You just need to look at Texas right now and gubner Goodhair and his cover up of executing and innocent man. That happens all too often in this country and it affects poor and minorities more often like you said. I saw a report recently that we are right up there with China, Iran and one other country I cannot remember when it comes to the death penalty.
October 21st, 2009 at 2:06 am
Interestingly, a few years ago an Illinois governor, himself in trouble for some kind of ethics breach, as I recall, out of conscience called a halt to executions in that state after one too many condemned prisoners was proven innocent beyond doubt by DNA and other evidence. Revelations also came out a few years back about incredibly incompetent court-appointed attorneys in Texas — in capital cases, no less — some of whose clients were proven innocent after execution, as I recall.
I have no problem in principle with putting a murderer like Ted Bundy to death. But not all cases are as clear cut as Bundy’s was. I want everyone to have a quality legal defense, top quality in capital cases, and an unquestionably fair trial. I want prosecutions free of seeking high scores for political gain. I want judges deciding cases without having one eye on running for office, as a judge or other position.
Because there’s too many a slip ‘twixt cup and the lip, I agree with you J.R. It’s better to cage a Bundy and pay his keep for years, along with a bunch of other killers, rather than execute innocent people. Bad enough to have to let someone mistakenly convicted out of prison after he/she has lost irreplaceable years. How much worse to have it come to light months or years after someone is executed that he/she was innocent all along.
October 21st, 2009 at 5:39 am
The company we keep, not just regarding the death penalty but in other areas such as education, infant mortality, etc., is…well, it’s damned depressing is what it is.
The death penalty is, as you said, Jolly, only a way for politicians to pretend they’re anything other than soft-handed prigs. I’ve said before that I’m not opposed to the death penalty, based on purely pragmatic grounds, but humans aren’t capable of passing that kind of judgement on other humans yet without it becoming some damned vengeance/political game, so it needs to be abolished. When one innocent person goes to their death, as we’ve seen happen before, then the entire notion needs to be scrapped entirely.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Because there’s too many a slip ‘twixt cup and the lip, I agree with you J.R. It’s better to cage a Bundy and pay his keep for years, along with a bunch of other killers, rather than execute innocent people
SW, the cost for the the extra appeals, etc., that have to take place before someone is executed, even if they are not fighting execution, are far greater that warehousing a Bundy fo life in super max.