Paper of fact how the death penalty costs more than life in prison Essay

Paper of fact how the death penalty costs more than life in prison - Essay Example Thre had been 550 executions carried out since the reinstitution of the death penalty (Radelet and Borg 43). The death penalty is considered to be a method of deterrence, the primary reason for the argument for the death penalty in the 1970s centered on this debate. However, this has been denounced as a viable excuse for the death penalty as it is rarely considered as part of the cost/benefit internal discussion of an offender during the commission of a crime that would warrant a death penalty verdict. According to Radelet and Akers, as related in Radelet and Borg, â€Å" in a recent survey of current and former presidents of three professional associations of criminologists (the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association), 85% of the experts agreed that the empirical research on deterrence has shown that the death penalty never has been, is not, and never could be superior to long prison sentences as a deterrent to criminal violence† (45). Therefore, deterrence is not a viable argument for the death penalty. The second argument for the death penalty is incapacitation. ... life in prison went on to commit a murder later on, and ironically, this figure turned out to be the same percentage of those 630 offenders who were discovered to be innocent of the crimes for which they had been originally sentenced to death (46). One way in which the death penalty provides context is in consideration of the nature of law and race relations. The statistics show that since the new laws have been put into place, the death penalty is far more likely to be put into place by an average of three to four times more often when the victim is white. There is a less bias when the offender is concerned, but more often it is within the racial nature of the victim (Radelet and Borg 48). The nature of law, unfortunately, has shown that race is a defining factor in the treatment of an offender, whether it be through their own race or through that of their victim. Because law is subjectively applied, race has an effect in the decisions of the judicial branch of government. In additi on, it has been very rare that anyone of any means has been sentenced to death, making the death sentence relative to the poverty of the offender (Geraghty 209). However, the best argument that has come into existence, one that covers a vast number of issues in regard to the use of the death penalty as a punitive measure, is that concerning the financial costs of the issue. One of the reasons that is often given, by a factor of 11%, in support of the death penalty is because there is a belief that a death sentence is cheaper than supporting a life sentence of incarceration. However, the estimates in 1988 for the overall costs of an execution were 3.2 million, with it costing a mere 600,000 for life in prison (Radelet and Borg 50). While these figures are more than likely very different 20