The Death Penalty

I ask my opponent to consider the obvious facts that are placed before him. Many prisons in the United States are overcrowded. For example, California's 33 prisons have a total capacity of 100,000, but they hold 170,000 inmates. Many prisons in California and around the country are forced to turn old gymnasiums and classrooms into huge bunkhouses for inmates. They do this by placing hundreds of bunk beds next to one another, in these gyms, without any type of barriers to keep inmates separated. In California, the inadequate security engendered by this situation, coupled with insufficient staffing levels, have led to increased violence and a prison health system that causes one death a week. This situation has led the courts to order California to release of 27% of the current prison population, citing the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The three-judge court considering requests by the Plata v. Schwarzenegger and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger courts found California's prisons have become criminogenic as a result of overcrowding. In 2006, $68,747,203,000 was spent on corrections. "The average annual operating cost per state inmate in 2001 was $22,650, or $62.05 per day; among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it was $22,632 per inmate, or $62.01 per day." Housing the approximately 500,000 people in jail awaiting trial who cannot afford bail costs $9 billion a year. Most jail inmates are petty, nonviolent offenders. Twenty years ago most nonviolent defendants were released on their own recognizance (trusted to show up at trial). Now most are given bail, and most pay a bail bondsman to afford it.62% of local jail inmates are awaiting trial. To ease jail overcrowding over 10 counties every year consider building new jails. As an example Lubbock County, Texas has decided to build a $110 million megajail to ease jail overcrowding. Jail costs an average of $60 a day nationally. In Broward County, Florida supervised pretrial release costs about $7 a day per person while jail costs $115 a day. The jail system costs a quarter of every county tax dollar in Broward County, and is the single largest expense to the county taxpayer. Bondsmen have lobbied to cut back local pretrial programs from Texas to California, pushed for legislation in four states limiting pretrial's resources, and lobbied Congress so that they won't have to pay the bond if the defendant commits a new crime. Behind them, the bondsmen have powerful special interest group and millions of dollars. Pretrial release agencies have a smattering of public employees and the remnants of their once-thriving programs. States spend an estimated 7 percent of their budget on corrections. The cost of medical care for inmates is growing by 10 percent annually. And your plan is to fill them up some more??? It doesn't make any sense. Prisons cost taxpayers more than $32 billion a year. Every year that an inmate spends in prison costs $22,000. An individual sentenced to five years for a $300 theft costs the public more than $100,000. The cost of a life term averages $1.5 million. States are spending more money on prisons than education. Over the course of the last 20 years, the amount of money spent on prisons was increased by 570% while that spent on elementary and secondary education was increased by only 33%. Lethal Injection Consists Of: Sodium Thiopental (lethal dose - sedates person) Pancuronium Bromide (muscle relaxant-collapses diaphragm and lungs) Potassium Chloride (stops heart beat) The offender is usually pronounced dead approximately 7 minutes after the lethal injection begins. Cost per execution for drugs used : $83.55 (much cheaper than a life sentence in prison) Average Time on Death Row prior to Execution: 10.60 years Lethal injection makes so much more sense then letting them live. They killed someone, they do not deserve to live, and to be kept alive. You know as well as I do that it would be much easier on the criminal to get a life sentence, then to know that he was going to die soon. Murders don't deserve prison "luxuries."