Death Penalty

Question:

What are the economic effects of the death penalty for public prisons?

The Death Penalty is a very controversial topic and there are many people that think that is immoral and should be banned. However, people often complain about taxes and want to pay less of their money to the government. It is possible that more implementation of the death penalty could lower the taxes for the general population. This could also give the government the opportunity to use this money in other places or give it to the people in the form of lowering taxes. People often see the death penalty as overkill and an unnecessary evil, but they view taxes the same way. In this project we will be looking into both of these and considering the effect of the death penalty on the economy.

Economic Concept #1- Incentives

The death penalty gives potental criminals incentives to think twice about the decision they are about to make, becasue of the potential of being put on death row. Even though it's used as an negitive incentive to try and regulate crime, but it dosen't work. The states without the death penalty have a murder rate of 4.49 and the states with the death implemented have a murder rate 5.63 as of 2016. (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates) The states with no death penalty have a lower murder rate by 25% . The death penalty is there to lower murder and crime rates, but that's not the case it seems like it's raising the murder rates.

Economic Concept #2- Cost Benefit Analysis

We have to look at the cost of both keeping an inmate in jail and putting one on death row to be able to run a cost analysis on this issue. For keeping a person in jail every year, it costs $25,136 annually on average per prisoner to prosecute (http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/styles/main_gallery/public/imprisonment-2017_0.png?itok=y3-Fc3k9)). We have to add the annual cost to detain a prisoner before their court date, $31,842, (http://www.uscourts.gov/news/2017/08/17/incarceration-costs-significantly-more-supervision) and add the cost of actually housing, feeding and gaurding prinoers once in jail, $167,731, (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost-per-inmate-is-nearly-168000-study-says.html). This adds up to an average annual cost of $224,709 per inmate. This is compared to the cost of the death penalty for one prisoner, $1,635,628, (http://www.nbcrightnow.com/story/15519792/what-costs-more-the-death-penalty-or-life-in-prison). This means that if a prisoner is in jail for 10 years or more, it is economically beneficial for them to be on death row.

Economic Concept #3- Public Policy

Should Governments implement policies either promoting or banning the death penalty? Is the death penalty an effective way to reduce crime? As we've shown before, the death penalty does not decrease crime and in some cases can actually make it worse. The support of the death penalty is also going down in America (http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/16/less-support-for-death-penalty-especially-among-democrats/). Over 90% of Americans believe that politicians support the death penalty to appear tough on crime even with reachurch showing that it doesn't work. (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent). This is important to consider when wondering the effects of the benefits because it leads us to believe that the death penalty doesn't have too much of a reason in America other than possibly for political reasons.

Conclusion

The incentive that is the death penalty isn't working so what is the point? The crime rates in states with the death penalty is higher than the ones without. Politicians agree with the death penalty many times without looking into the details. However, it is cheaper to kill someone than to keep them alive. We will always have to worry about the public opinion and the political side of things as well.