Salutations Congress,
There are currently over 1,000 state prisoners on death row in America. As you are aware, the punishment of execution, known as the death penalty, is administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. Death penalty sends the wrong message, by creating sympathy for the perpetrators of the crimes. Why kill people who kill people to show killing is wrong? Yes, there should be accountability for crime, but the message for the death penalty saying ”You killed one of us, so we 'll kill you" uses murder to punish someone who committed murder. How does this make sense? Death is an unusually severe punishment, which is why we need to kill the death penalty, not the people. Death is never a good answer. There is no current …show more content…
When confining someone to death row, it costs the state millions of dollars to provide shelter, attorneys, and security for the inmate. “Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first degree murderers with life in prison without parole” (DPK 4). Imprisoning someone for life is clearly less expensive than going through the death penalty process. Changing all death sentences to life in prison would save hundreds of millions of dollars per year in the United States and eventually trillions in the future. The death penalty is quite expensive and therefore, life imprisonment is much cheaper. “In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about 3 times [more] that cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years” (Dallas Morning News 1). If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the saved money could be spent on programs that improve the communities in our society such as drug-free programs and education, and money would not be wasted on years of trials and
There are currently over 1,000 state prisoners on death row in America. As you are aware, the punishment of execution, known as the death penalty, is administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. Death penalty sends the wrong message, by creating sympathy for the perpetrators of the crimes. Why kill people who kill people to show killing is wrong? Yes, there should be accountability for crime, but the message for the death penalty saying ”You killed one of us, so we 'll kill you" uses murder to punish someone who committed murder. How does this make sense? Death is an unusually severe punishment, which is why we need to kill the death penalty, not the people. Death is never a good answer. There is no current …show more content…
When confining someone to death row, it costs the state millions of dollars to provide shelter, attorneys, and security for the inmate. “Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first degree murderers with life in prison without parole” (DPK 4). Imprisoning someone for life is clearly less expensive than going through the death penalty process. Changing all death sentences to life in prison would save hundreds of millions of dollars per year in the United States and eventually trillions in the future. The death penalty is quite expensive and therefore, life imprisonment is much cheaper. “In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about 3 times [more] that cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years” (Dallas Morning News 1). If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the saved money could be spent on programs that improve the communities in our society such as drug-free programs and education, and money would not be wasted on years of trials and