Studies say death penalty deters crime

[Kuciwalker]

At least in NYS I can say the Dp has no real deterent effect, since there has been a moriturium. and guess what? The murder rate continues to drop.

Irrelevant.

[Berzerker]

It's quite easy to come up with Utilitarian arguments against torture based on the latter of these points. For example, imagine you have a person in custody, and torturing them to find the location of a bomb could save 100 people. It seems Utilitarian to torture them. However the negative effect of that torture isn't just the torture itself, it's the fact that you then have 300 million people who all know they now live in a country that commits torture, and they have a (perhaps irrational) fear that they may be wrongly tortured if authorities feel they have information like this.

I'd be cheering the torturer who saved 100 lives, the objection you raise is once we let gov't torture, the innocent will be tortured since mistakes will be made. Thats basically my objection to the DP, but we've undoubtedly imprisoned innocent people for life because mistakes are made, is that an argument against life imprisonment? The finality of the DP is what bothers me, if I'm innocent and in jail, I may be exonerated. We owe the innocent in our jails that chance...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Molly, I find myself agreeing with Heresson, where I had no real opinion previously.
You really are an ass.

And you're a Texan.

Biologically, I'd still win.

[MikeH]

The death penalty is bad because:

1. It's more expensive, the appeals etc. cost a fortune much more than life inprisonment
2. If you find out you've made a mistake you can release a lifer, you can't reincarnate a dead person
3. It's actually more of a punishment to be locked up for a long life in jail and lifers'd rather get executed
4. There's never been any credible evidence that is provides a detterent.

[SlowwHand]

Thank you for the undocumented opinions.

[MikeH]

1. The cost being higher is a well known FACT and not opinion. I can provide plenty of links, but they've already been posted here many times. Here's a good source of links to studies (i'd ignore the deterrent research, for reasons in point 4):

http://www.uvm.edu/~vlrs/doc/deathpenalty.htm

I don't believe anyone, even death penalty advocates would say it's cheaper.

2. Is an undisputable FACT (unless there's been a breakthrough in voodoo?). Innoccent people have been executed and you can't reincarnate them.

3. is a lighthearted link to a story, but it's a valid viewpoint that once someone is dead their suffering is over, if you keep them in prison it prolongs the punishment.

4. it's also true that there's been no credible evidence that it doesn't provide a detterent. You can poke holes in any research that says it does or does not provide a deterrent. It's basically not proveable either way, so I think that it should be discounted from Death Penalty decision making. My personal view is that people who commit murders do so either in a fit of rage or don't think they are going to get caught and therefore the punishment doesn't matter.

[MikeH]

Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution (Miami Herald). It costs six times more to execute a person in Florida than to incarcerate a prisoner for life with no parole. In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years (Dallas Morning News). The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total incurred at the trial level (Sacramento Bee). The New York Department of Correctional Services estimated that implementing the death penalty would cost the state about $118 million annually. To illustrate the cost, it is estimated that the money it would take to implement the death penalty in New York for just five years would be enough to fund 250 additional police officers and build prisons for 6,000 inmates (Lacayo, 1987).

Why waste tax payers money on executions? Save money and incarcerate. Big government

[Berzerker]

the DP is expensive because of the lengthy appeals process, not because it costs alot of money to kill someone.