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Originally Posted by MageB420666
Yes, because we all know that it's just as easy to house, feed, and guard someone 24/7 for decades as it is to stick a needle in their arm.
I am for the death penalty. If you commit 1st degree murder or rape, you deserve to die. It is the only punishment that has a 100% chance of preventing the person from commiting the same crime again, with life imprisonment the criminal still has the chance(however slim) of escaping or making a successful appeal.
As for their not being a death penalty because it's immoral, well, morals are based on religion and the First Ammendment takes care of that. As for just not liking the death penalty, well it's an opinion and just as valid as my opinion, but I hope the government follows mine.
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Since most criminals sit on death row for at LEAST a decade, and on average approxmiately twenty years, along with numerous other costs of the death penalty, death row inmates are costlier than normal inmates. If it was just "guilty, out you go, now kill them", then it would be cheaper; the United States' current system is not.
The main difficulty in administering the death penalty from my point of view is that it is final. If someone is found to be innocent afterwards, you cannot release them from death. It's basically "Whoops, our bad. Sorry we killed somebody because we're a bunch of fuckups". At least with life imprisonment, those who are wrongfully convicted can have a chance of being freed in due time; similarily it can go with those who committed lesser crimes but are inaccurately convicted of more serious crimes, and those who do become repentant.
It would also be cheaper to just have prisoners live in prison towns, where they would be forced to farm and work to sustain themselves, rather than having everything handed to them on a plate. You can still run a total institution without feeding and clothing people and attending to them like children.