Death Penalty Essay -- essays research papers

The use of the death penalty in the United States has been a great debate for many years. One of the major aspects of this debate is whether or not we should continue to use this form of punishment for criminals. In my opinion, the death penalty should be abolished because it costs taxpayers much more than sending an inmate to prison and there is no factual evidence that it has any greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One major reason that I believe that the death penalty should be abolished is because the expenses of the death penalty greatly exceed those of life imprisonment. â€Å"Maintaining a system of Capital Punishment is far more expensive than sending murderers to prison until they die of natural causes. No systematic study has reached a contrary conclusion†(Costanzo 62). When various states conducted research on reinstating the death penalty, it was found that the cost would be enormous. A study in New York showed that the cost would be $118 million dollars each year to restore the death penalty within the state. Another study conducted in Kansas illustrated that the cost of the death penalty would be $11.4 million for the first year of reinstatement, and that the expenses would only rise each year as more prisoners were placed on death row (Quoted in Hanks 125). When compared to the cost of life imprisonment, these figures are astronomical. â€Å"A life sente nce in prison without parole is estimated to range from $750,000 to $1.1 mi...