Peace-Lovin' Brother

Edward writes:

According to the statistics below, it is much more expensive to execute someone than to incarcerate them for life.The great majority of this cost has to do with legal expenses. But then depriving someone of their life is so permanent that we don'twant to make a mistake, do we? And despite the procedures that we have, many people on death row have been exonerated in the past fewyears with DNA evidence.

From "The Economics of Capital Punishment" http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html
A Duke University study found... "The death penalty costs NorthCarolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life." ( The costs of processing murder cases in North Carolina / Philip J. Cook,Donna B. Slawson ; with the assistance of Lori A. Gries. [Durham, NC]: Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, 1993.)

"The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level." (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988)."

A 1991 study of the Texas criminal justice system estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at $2,316,655. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum security prison single cell for40 years is estimated at $750,000." (Punishment and the Death Penalty, edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum 1995 p.109 )

"Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 millionper execution."(Miami Herald, July 10, 1988).
"Florida calculated that each execution there costs some $3.18 million. If incarceration is estimated to cost $17000/year, a comparable statistic for life in prison of 40 years would be $680,000."(The Geography of Execution... The Capital Punishment Quagmire inAmerica, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood 1997 p.6)

Figures from the General Accounting Office are close to these results. Total annual costs for all U.S. Prisons, State and Federal, was $17.7billion in 1994 along with a total prison population of 1.1 million inmates. That amounts to $16100 per inmate/year. (GAO report and testimony FY-97 GGD-97-15 )