Life on Death Row
The number of inmates in today’s prisons serving time on death row has increased to over 3000 since 1968. This doesn’t necessary mean that more individuals are involved in more criminal activity that would issue them a death sentence But, it has become a very slow process to carry out the sentence to persons convicted by a jury of their peers. This seems to be a growing problem, when an individual is sentenced to death there are certain rights they have in order to protect the convicted persons. With these rights there are problems that affect not only the convicted persons, but the prison system and the states. If the states could carry out the death penalty in a timely manner it would shorten time spent on death row, minimize the cost to the state, and reduce overcrowding of the prisons. When you are convicted of a crime by 12 members of a jury of your peers, and even after several attempts by your counsel, you are sentenced to the most talked about punishment in today’s society the death penalty. In the beginning when the constitution was written in 1776, the idea of the death penalty was set out in order to be carried out within a matter of days. Now after 100 years of convictions, this is becoming a painful process. The supreme court noted ”That long delays between sentencing and executions,compounded by prisoner’s uncertainty over time of execution could be agonizing.”(In Re Metley,1890, Foster v Florida 2002). According, to the Death Penalty 2 Information center, the average death row inmate in the United States spends well over 20 years in prison. That a convicted inmate on death row, is more likely to die of natural causes then the sentence that they were issued. Even though they received a sentence that would send them to death row, there is a very good chance that old age or natural causes would be the reason that they would ever leave the prison that has housed them for many years, and not the death sentence they received by the courts. In today’s prisons when a person has been sentenced there is no maximum number of times and inmate can appeal a conviction. This may be one of the reasons why it takes so long to carry out their sentence of death. While utilizing the appeal process this can become very costly. According to Stephen Magagnin(Mar 28,1988) Bee staff writer, Main news. The average cost to house an inmate for life is approximately 930,240 that is if the average life expectancy of someone sentenced to death row is 40 years. This becomes a huge amount the state is being charged. Sheriff Joel Richardson of Randall County states that “taxpayers could expect to pay up to 65 dollars per day …show more content…
Even though the length of time an inmate spends on death row, or the amount of cost it takes to house these inmates, there is another concern, and that would be the overcrowding of the prisons in the United States. A good example, of this ongoing overcrowding problem would be San Quentin, California. In this prison there are currently 580 males and 12 women serving time on death row. This extremely large amount of people on California’s death row is so overcrowded that the prison could stage and execution every day for 19 months including weekends and not exhaust its ranks. John M Glenn (April 2001) Times staff writer, Los Angeles Times. This poses a huge concern with so many inmates on death row, you have to consider safety. In most cases throughout the US a death row inmate could spend up to 23 hours per day in a 6x8 cell. Spending this much time in isolation has a tendency to weigh on the minds of the convicted.(Death Penalty Information Center) During this time there is nothing for the inmates to think about except their current sentence. When you talk about the overcrowding of the prisons, you have to take into consideration the safety of the staff that are hired to ensure and maintain order throughout the prisons. With so many inmates on death row and not enough personnel to protect the property and monitor those convicted, this should allow the states that house these death row inmates to carry out their