Why do we send murderers to jail?

brandonbaker

brandonbaker

Member
Jan 10, 2011
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New York City
This motherfucking bastard James Holmes just sprayed bulletholes into the bodies of innocent moviegoers in Aurora, CO and will probably end up with multiple life sentences in what we can only hope is the dingiest, most homosexual prison in the world.

James Holmes will cost the United States $47,102 per year to maintain in prison.

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source: California Criminal Justice FAQ: How much does it cost to incarcerate an inmate?

I'm by no means an expert in government, politics, ethics, or economics but it seems much more sensible to me to just kill this motherfucker and be done with it.

Imagine what $45,000 per year per inmate can do for those who really need it. Obviously the death penalty would be reserved for a select minority of potential inmates (those who would have life sentences anyway--or something like that).

Someone explain this to me, please, because I don't get it.
 


I believe it costs more to do the death penalty than to leave them in jail until they die.

There is like a huge process and they have to exhaust all of their appeals which takes years and years. All that time in and out of court costs more than just letting them sit in jail.

Maybe it should be streamlined or something. But there are a number of states without the death penalty and trying to change change it to streamline it would probably take forever.
 
I think a better question is why the fuck do we incarcerate people whose actions resulted in no victims? That's far worse than imprisoning people who actually hurt others.

My question is rhetorical, you don't have to answer it. ;)
 
It's not cheap to kill someone, either. You have trials, appeals, and everything else.

The greatest costs associated with the death penalty occur prior to and during trial, not in post-conviction proceedings. Even if all post-conviction proceedings (appeals) were abolished, the death penalty would still be more expensive than alternative sentences.
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It usually costs at least millions to put someone to death.
 
I think he's pointing out that the system as a whole has some fundamental problems. For example, why it costs so much to kill someone in a case that is so cut and dry like what this case will probably be.
 
dreamache said:
I think a better question is why the fuck do we incarcerate people whose actions resulted in no victims? That's far worse than imprisoning people who actually hurt others.

My question is rhetorical, you don't have to answer it. ;)
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Was already answered by Andrew Scherer

Andrew Scherer said:
Because incarceration is a huge business in the US.

45k a year for life is the ultimate in rebills, why would they kill of a customer like that?
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lschmidt said:
I think he's pointing out that the system as a whole has some fundamental problems. For example, why it costs so much to kill someone in a case that is so cut and dry like what this case will probably be.
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Because you can claim insanity, which launches a psychological investigation, evidence can be tampered with or messed up, blabla.. There's tons of things which cause trials to go on and on and become rapidly expensive even when they see clear cut. If you knew you were getting the death penalty, you'd do everything you could to delay it.

I'd argue that it's worth the extra money to ensure that even 1 innocent man isn't put to death, too. It's the whole reason such things exist.
 
When an item is no longer considered a good provided by the market - where consumers are best served by (voluntarily) entering into contracts with producers - the price of the good tends to rise while options to obtain it tend to dwindle.

So it is with health care, education, justice, law, etc. The effect may not be evident in the short run, but usually surfaces over the long run.

A good read: Criminal And Civil Law In Free-Market Justice
 
mituozo said:
you can claim insanity, which launches a psychological investigation, evidence can be tampered with or messed up, blabla.. There's tons of things which cause trials to go on and on and become rapidly expensive even when they see clear cut. If you knew you were getting the death penalty, you'd do everything you could to delay it.
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lschmidt said:
I think he's pointing out that the system as a whole has some fundamental problems
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mituozo said:
I'd argue that it's worth the extra money to ensure that even 1 innocent man isn't put to death, too. It's the whole reason such things exist.
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No system will ever be perfect. I think that is one of the fundamental problems in this country, and with human thinking in general.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

No system we ever devise will be 100% perfect, with 0 false negatives or false positives. We will sometimes never find the murderer and we will sometimes punish the innocent. But what we can control is how we handle the 99% of cases in which we got it right.
 
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