Quote from hapaboy:
For those opposed to capital punishment who mention being in favor of prison sentences of life without parole for hard-core criminals (never mind that such sentences are not given out anywhere as often as they should be), take a look at the plain economic costs.
In 1997, in New Jersey, these were the costs:
$500,000 to put a new person in prison; $150,000 to build a new cell; $150,000 for arrest and prosecution; and $150,000 to $200,000 to incarcerate that person for five years.
So, you've basically spent $1.15 million dollars for imprisoning then caring for one prisoner for 5 years.
Apparently in Jersey in '97 then, incarcerating one inmate cost $30,000 to $40,000 per year. Let's go with the conservative figure of $30,000 and forget for the moment that costs have gone up in the past 6 years. Let's also assume Jersey's prison costs are more or less on par with the rest of the nation's.
Okay, tab so far for holding one prisoner for 5 years = $1.15 million.
If we put them in for life, how many more years shall we add to the tab? I don't know what the statistics are for the average age of violent offenders, but for the sake of this discussion let's get extremely conservative and set the average age of the prisoner at 40 when they enter the system. So now they're 45 and we've spent $1.15 million on them already. Since the national average life expectancy for the US male is around 72 years old, I believe, let's get conservative again and make it 70.
So our 45-year-old convict who has up to now cost us $1.15 million has another 25 years of life in him. 25 years multiplied by $30,000 = $750,000. Add that to what we've spent on him thus far and you get $1.9 million dollars.
Throw in a little inflation over those 25 years and basically you're conservatively looking at around $2 million for coddling each convict until they die.
Hmmm, isn't the LIFETIME wealth accumulation rate for your average hard-working and honest American around $1 million?
Does it make any sense at all that we as a society spend TWICE as much money on a person who has committed horrible crimes to innocent members of our community than what one of us (should our trading careers fail) can expect to earn in our entire life?
Is it not absolutely RIDICULOUS that we spend more money on prison inmates than educating our kids and feeding the hungry?
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Cost of a good piece of rope at your average hardware store: $20
Cost of a .22 magnum bullet: 16 cents.
Cost of allowing a violent criminal back into society: Incalculable.
What is an innocent person's life worth? To the anti-death penalty crowd, apparently not very much at all.
