Death Penalty

*NOTE: ALL STATISTICS ARE BASED ON USA PRISONS UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED Although the death penalty is considered not to be a humane way to punish criminals, it is certainly a more humane punishment than spending years in a building where you are caged in, treated poorly, assaulted, raped, and fed disgusting food. The death penalty should not be a punishment for petty crimes. It should be reserved for crimes that would typically bring a long sentence(10+ years.) There are many crimes that have penalties longer than 10 years, such as grand theft, embezzlement, extreme tax evasion, and other non violent crimes, that should not necessarily be punished with the death penalty. With that said, the first step to making the death penalty an "acceptable" punishment is to revamp the prison system. Currently the prison system is failing to "rehabilitate" its prisoners. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 30 states, 3 out of 4 released inmates were arrested again within 5 years of release(https://www.bjs.gov....) Of the formerly incarcerated, 61% of inmates arrested 4 or fewer times before were re-incarcerated, and 86% of those with 10 or more arrests were re-incarcerated. (Information from same source as above.) Norway is the country with the lowest recidivism(re-incarceration) rate, sitting at 20% (http://www.businessinsider.com....) Norway's prison system focuses on rehabilitating the criminal, and therefore works very differently than ours. Inmates can only be initially given up to 21 years in prison, however more years can be added. Norway's prisons have prisoners live in a society very much like real society: the inmates cook for themselves with whatever utensils needed, everyone has the opportunity to become friends(even guards can be friends with inmates,) there are outlets for anger/emotion(some prisons have recording studios,) and there are no unnecessary bars. Inmates can learn vocational skills, and the area is generally nice. Rehabilitation techniques include personal therapy and anger management therapy. With further focus on rehabilitating the individual, and better rehabilitation techniques, we can then shorten the length of prison sentences. Proper rehabilitation(which is the purpose of jail, not to punish"a common misconception) should be able to take place within 10 years. If in 10 years a criminal cannot be rehabilitated, he/she should be euthanized. Committers of especially heinous crimes such as murder, rape, and child molestation should be given the death penalty upon conviction. They will stay in prison for 10 years while any remaining evidence is found, appeals are exhausted, and retrials held. If the conviction upholds, then once that judgement has been reached, even if the 10 year grace period has not yet passed, the criminal will be euthanized immediately. In 2015, having criminals imprisoned in federal prisons cost between $26,000 and $32,000 per inmate per year(https://www.federalregister.gov....) The budget for federal prisons that year totaled $8.5 billion. The percent of inmates serving/convicted of time 10 years or greater is approximately 48.7%(https://www.bop.gov....) For easy calculation and accounting for margin of error, let"s assume that rate is 50%. Half($4.75 billion) of the federal prison budget in 2015 was spent on inmates serving sentences of 10+ years. There is at least $2.5 billion worth of tax money to be saved by not spending it on overly long prison sentences. The death penalty is extremely inexpensive depending on the method. I recommend firing squad. Bullets cost a few cents each, and prison guards already carry weapons anyway. That is most likely the simplest and most effective execution method. A quick summary: The American prison system is meant to rehabilitate inmates, yet fails miserably at doing so. The US boasts a whopping 75% recidivism rate. The methods used in US prison systems are not designed to complete the task of rehabilitation. Norway has a very different jail system with the lowest recidivism rate in the world(20%.) American jails should be more closely modeled after Norwegian prisons, and the maximum sentence should be 10 years. If an inmate cannot be rehabilitated in that time, the death penalty is the best course of action. Criminals that commit extreme crimes such as murder or rape should be euthanized as soon as all appeals and due process has been exhausted and the conviction stands. Spending around $30,000 per inmate per year in federal prison is more than many people are paid in this country, and with approximately half of all inmates serving sentences of longer than 10 years, at least a quarter of the $8.5 billion dollar federal prison budget could be saved by getting rid of half the prisoners. There are many forms of execution, but firing squad is likely to the be simplest and most cost effective method. The death penalty is overall a more humane, economical, quicker, and easier form of punishment than spending many years in a jail where worse things than the original crime can continually happen to the inmate.