Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment, also know as the death penalty, is usually given to criminals charged with aggravated murder. The U.S. has executed 4,661 people from 1930 to 2002.Since the 1977 resumption of capital punishment in the United States, nearly 1,100 convicted prisoners have been executed in Thirty-eight states where it remains legal. Capital Punishment is much more involved than it seems. Once a person has been convicted and sentenced to the death penalty, he or she is then sent to death row. While on death row an inmate has the right to an appeal trail. This trial usually takes years to finish and costs millions of extra dollars to the state and tax payers. If Capital Punishment was abolished and the maximum sentence was life in prison, millions of dollars would be saved and could be used for other issues.

Many will argue that the death penalty is necessary for stopping crime and that it is the punishment that they deserve. Others will say that it is a good deterrent of crime. Many studies have been done that show otherwise. Eighty-eight percent of the country's top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide, according to a new study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Traci Lacock, also at Boulder. (X) A new study conducted by New York Times states that states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states that have the death penalty. The Times reports that ten of the twelve states without the death penalty have homicide rates below the national average, whereas half of the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above. (X) With all these studies and surveys that have been done, it is quite clear that the death penalty does stop crime or even slow it down. So why waste millions of dollars on something that has been proven ineffective? Instead that saved money could be used to help with many other problems.

The Death Penalty cost states millions of dollars every year. The most expensive part of the death penalty is the pre-trial and trial costs. These are almost half of the entire cost of executing a person. Capital Punishment cases often cost 10 to 20 times more that murder trials resulting in life in prison. By abolishing capital punishment, millions of dollars would be saved and could be used in other programs and to solve other issues. The money could be used to better enforce safety and lessen crime. The money could go to schools for better technology and resources to provide kids with a better education. Many family members that have lost loved ones to murder feel that the death penalty will not fully heal their wounds. Funds that would be used to execute the murderer could be given to the victims family to aid in recovery through counseling, restitution,