For this post I will express my final feelings on the topic of the death penalty. The death penalty is a topic that had received a lot of press in the past; however, the press that it has gotten has been for the most part directed at abolishing it. I feel that the death not necessarily a good thing, but it is a necessary evil. The fact is that many people agree with my opinion of this matter. People who are in favor of the death penalty choose not to speak out about it because they feel it is a personal opinion. The majority of people who speak out about the death penalty are against it. The reason they speak out is because they want to see change.
A main topic of debate is the cost of the death penalty compared to that of life imprisonment. There is no question that the upfront cost of the death penalty is much higher compared to life without parole cases; however, when the overall cost are compared after the variable of time is added, the totals are surprisingly different. The cost of LWOP can be estimated to be around $34,000/year. If a person is in prison for 50 years and the annual cost increase at 3% and the price for trial and appeals around $75,000, the total for one inmate with a LWOP sentence is about 4.04 million dollars. The cost of a year on death row is approximately $60,000/year. If a person is on death row for 6 years with a trial and appeals cost of 1.5 million dollars and the same annual cost increase of 3%, the total cost of one execution comes out to around 1.91 million dollars.
This is just one reason why capital punishment is something we should keep in our courts. There are many other reasons why its positives outweigh its negatives
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