this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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According to this, as of 2015, the cost to incarcerate a man for 1 year in Alabama was $14,780.
As we all know, costs have skyrocketed since 2015, but let's be ultra, ultra generous & say incarceration costs were a flat $10K/yr until 2014. 25 years at $10K/yr, $250K.
Let's pretend inflation somehow never happened, 2015 - 2023, 9 years at $14,780. $133,020.
$133,020 + $250,000 = $383,020.
Inmate at one time requested firing squad, and death is death, so let's say the bullet cost $2. You allocate an additional $4,998 for staff to perform firing squad duties, party balloons, party hats, and confetti. $5K & 5 mins....vs. 35 years & $383K++++, only to end with a more expensive & contrived execution style, more suffering, and the exact same end result. Death is death.
So about a million dollars, or 5 times cheaper than the median cost of the death penalty.
The median cost of a death penalty is $1,250,000
Even without your estimating and looking up the actual numbers — actual cost of lifetime incarceration is 800k, so in real life it's only twice as expensive to execute someone. Also the equivalent of about 3-4 years salary of a corporate Director or VP
And that's not even considering that incarceration has fringe benefits too. Through study, analysis, therapy and statistics we can learn how to prevent tragedy in future — not the case with execution.
You're missing all of the lawyers fees to get to stop the execution.