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Dec 24, 2009, 4:31am

Ohio Death Row Support Forum :: The Death Penalty and Lethal Injection :: Non Ohio Lethal Injection and Death Penalty In The News :: From a budget standpoint, is death row worth it?

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Topic: From a budget standpoint, is death row worth it? (Read 16 times)

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From a budget standpoint, is death row worth it?
« Thread Started on Oct 20, 2009, 12:50pm »

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.

Fighting violent crime

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.”

Financial concerns

Kansas was one of 11 states that brought up measures in 2009 to abolish the death penalty.

The bill, which was tabled for study before a formal vote was taken, is expected to come back for consideration when the Legislature convenes in January.

“We’ve had the death penalty since 1994, and we continue to pay for the process with little results,” said state Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, who sponsored the bill. “But we continue to cut the programs that could prevent these types of crimes.”

Among the death penalty’s costs are more complex legal issues in cases that can take two years to go to trial, followed by a decade or more of appeals.

McGinn cited community corrections programs, along with prenatal care and programs to help young mothers, among those suffering from budget cuts.

“More important is to take that money (saved by abolishing the death penalty) and putting it into those preventative programs,” McGinn said.

The report released today cited audits in Kansas, North Carolina, Indiana and California, all of which show the death penalty is more expensive than cases that result in life prison sentences.

The 2003 audit in Kansas showed capital cases cost 70 percent more than non-capital murder cases.

“We’ve got life without parole,” McGinn said. “We’re still paying for this process when we could spend less, lock them up and remove them from society.”

The report suggests that the death penalty has cost at least $2.5æbillion nationwide over the past three decades.

Only one in three death penalty trials result in a death sentence, the report said, and only one in 10 of those are executed.

New Mexico abolished the death penalty last year, based on costs, and Ohio joined a half-dozen other states by putting moratoriums on executions. Ohio’s hold followed a failed execution last month.

http://www.kansas.com/news/story/1018965.html

Also has an online poll.

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Fact: the death certificate of an executed person lists the cause of death as homicide".

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