The Death Penalty

I accept :)

"What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!"
-Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables

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Taxes


On average the United States spends $24,000 per inmate per year to be fed/clothed/treated medically, etc [1]. For those that don't know, this is taxpayer subsidized. In the state of New York, prisoners cost around $60,000 per year on average [2]. The average age of a murderer in 2008 was 29 years old [3], meanwhile the average lifespan of somebody in the United States is 82 [4]. A life sentence for somebody (assuming they hold true to the averages) that is arrested for commiting a homicide at 29 years of age would die after being incarcerated for 53 years; as long as they did not get out after 25 years. As medical technology gets better, people are living longer, but I won't account for that in this debate.

Assuming nationwide averages again, we are multiplying 53 years by $24,000. This racks up a bill of $1,272,000 per criminal. This is taxpayer money going towards a killer. Why should somebody that is personally affected by him/her be forced to pay for their existence? This isn't just 1.3 Million in total mind you, this is 1.3 Million per prisoner, therefore every time somebody that commits a homicide is entered into a prison, they are costing the American taxpayers lots of money.

In comparison to the national average wage ($44,321.67 [5]), and the cost of a prisoner, it takes somebody making an average wage roughly 29 years to make these numbers equal. $1,272,000 may not seem like a large number, but for most people it is huge.

Also, as some executions can be fairly expensive, I would just like to point out that the cost of a single bullet to the head is infintesimal compared to a life sentence [6].

As a result of the economic implications of a life sentence, I believe execution to be practical.

Right To Life

A man, let's call him Bob, has just brutually slaughtered a seven year old girl named Sally with his bare hands. I argue that he lost his right to life the second he laid his hands on her. Why does he deserve to foot Sally's parents the bill for his medical care, food, water, etc for the rest of his life if he doesn't get parole or an appeal at 25 years. Frankly, he does not deserve that, but

As the definition of "justice" is pretty useless (just behavior or treatment), I shall use the definition of "just" to support my claim: "based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair". Both definitions are from Google.

In a case such as this I consider the death penalty to be behaving according to what is morally right and fair.

Morality

The definition of morality (according to Google again) is the "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior." I believe that execution is moral because morality is subjective.

Reality

The death penalty isn't even that common. In Alabama in 2011, there were 43 people on death row for every million [7]. As Alabama has a population of 4.8 million, this means there were (very)roughly 200 people on death row. This compares to 299 cases of murder in the same year [8]. Keep in mind though, they only executed six people [9](14% of the 43 executions in the entire country) in the same year.

So while there were 300 murders, and 200 people on death row, only six were executed. That's .02%, or two one hundreths of the murders resulted in executions (6/300)

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I argue that the death penalty should not be abolished because it has the potential to be more economical than a life sentence, forcing effected famiies to pay for the murderer's existence is unfair, and the death penalty isn't even very common.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...
[2] http://www.vera.org...;(page 9 paragraph 1)
[3] http://www.bjs.gov...;
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org...;(34th)
[5] http://www.ssa.gov...
[6] http://www.answers.com...
[7] http://www.theguardian.com...;
[8] http://www.disastercenter.com...
[9] http://blog.al.com...

Let's call this a draw because obviously neither of us have time for this.