Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Capital Punishment
It baffles me how much money we Massachusetts citizens pay in state taxes for prison maintenance. It costs approximately $80,000 a year to maintain the life of one prisoner in the hope that he may reform himself and return to a productive member of society. Yet a prison, by its definition of its purpose, is of no use to those who are sentenced to a life term. If they are going to be in jail for life then there is no point in their hope of reform and no need for me to pay for them. So wouldn't that $80,000 be better used towards helping the elderly or funding the school systems? Also, since this country was founded on the beliefs of justice and fair treatment it is only right that the wickedness of the crime should be matched with a punishment of equal caliber. Those who intentionally take the life of another deserve to have the same done to them. And what are we trying to do? Are we trying to show that killers can get away with murder and not reap the full consequences? People are more likely to follow through with immoral ideas if they believe the actions outweigh the risk. So by keeping killers in jail we're ultimately urging on those intending to murder since we're allowing the victim to be killed while the culprit stays alive. So again I find myself asking the same question: why is Capital Punishment illegal?
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While you make a good argument, the problem lies with the death penalty that mistakes are going to be made, and they are more frequent than most people realize. Since 1900, an average of four people per year were falsely accused of capital crimes and sentenced to death for it. Also the argument that it is more expensive for life imprisonment is also false. A 1982 study showed that if the death penalty was re-legalized in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison.
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