Death Row is not cost effective Monday, May 24, 2010 By - Ariah Wooden Advertising For those living on Death Row, death is no joke. For people living in Florida, the cost of Death Row is no joke. Florida spends about $50 million to carry out its average of just over two executions per year. Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in Florida, the state has casrried out 68 executions. As of Feb. 1, 2010, there were 392 inmates on Death Row in Florida. The death penalty eats up money that could be used towards productive causes such as education, scholarships, medical expenses, housing support or the fight against cancer. Our country is in trillions of odllars of national debt, and yet we are spending money to kill people. Then there is the means of execution to consider — lethal injection or electric chair. Let's say the prisoner chooses death by lethal injection. That involves being strapped down to a gurney, having needles inserted into veins for an anesthetic to put the inmate to sleep, followed by an injection of a medication which stops breathing and causes paralysis. If the inmate does not fall completely asleep, he will feel harrowing pain without being able to physicially show the pain. The second method, using the electric chair, brings its own horrors. Autopsies have shown as much as foot-long burns on the body. What are we supposed to do with the Ted Bundys of the world? According to the FLorida Department of Corrections, in 2008-09 in cost the state about $52 a day, or about $19,000 per year, to take care of an inmate in a state facility. That averages less than $1 million for 50 years. Most inmates work to offset the cost of their care. They grow their own food, build new prisons and work on community projects. Life imprisonment is a better choice economically and humanely. As recently as 2009 New Mexico abolished the death penalty. In 2007 both New Jersey and New York ended the death penalty. A New Jersey commission set up to study the issue foundt hat the cost out-weighed life imprisonment without parole, it did not measure up to current standards of decency, and the risk of executing an innocent person was too high. Florida should now follow this path.

Back to the articles list