{"id":12169,"date":"2010-07-20T20:40:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T20:40:22","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-07-20T20:40:22","modified_gmt":"2010-07-20T20:40:22","slug":"lets-cut-the-death-penalty-and-save-california-126-million-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/20\/lets-cut-the-death-penalty-and-save-california-126-million-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s Cut the Death Penalty and Save California $126 Million a Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Ramona Ripston, Executive Director, ACLU of Southern California <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The California Supreme Court has just &#8216;sentenced&#8217; our state&#8217;s taxpayers to  an additional debt of at least $180,000 more per year. How? The state&#8217;s high  court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/local\/California-high-court-upholds-2-death-sentences-98573019.html\" target=\"_hplink\">upheld the death penalty<\/a> in two cases. <\/p>\n<p>Imposing the death penalty adds enormously to the cost of prosecution and  permanent lifetime housing for an inmate. The death penalty is certainly a  polarizing public policy issue, but I wonder how many people realize that it&#8217;s  also a vortex-like drain on their own pocketbooks. <\/p>\n<p>Whether you&#8217;re for or against the death penalty, you are paying for it. Here  are the staggering numbers, from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclunc.org\/issues\/criminal_justice\/death_penalty\/the_hidden_death_tax_the_secret_costs_of_seeking_execution_in_california.shtml\" target=\"_hplink\">report by the ACLU of Northern California:<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>  <strong>$90,000 a year:<\/strong>  taxpayers&#8217; extra cost of holding one  inmate on death row, over and above the cost of keeping an inmate in the  general prison population<\/li>\n<li>  <strong>$10.9 million:<\/strong>  taxpayers&#8217; cost of one death penalty trial,  based on the records of a sample of trials<\/li>\n<li>  <strong>$117 million a year:<\/strong>  taxpayers&#8217; cost of seeking execution,  after conviction, for inmates throughout the state<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Altogether, Californians spend as much per year in pursuit of executions as  the salaries of more than 2,500 experienced teachers, or 2,250 new California  Highway Patrol officers.\n  <\/p>\n<p>Why are we putting our cash-strapped state and county governments, and  ourselves, through this? The ACLU of Northern California&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclunc.org\/issues\/criminal_justice\/death_penalty\/death_by_geography_a_county_by_county_analysis_of_the_road_to_execution.shtml?ht=death%20by%20geography%20death%20by%20geography\">county-by-county  comparison, <em>Death by Geography<\/em><\/a>, found that counties that sentencing people  to death do not experience lower homicide rates or raise rates of solving  homicides.  <\/p>\n<p>Instead of California  cutting $50 million from the fund for victims of violent crime, as the  legislature and governor did last year, the ACLU California affiliates suggest  the state <a href=\"http:\/\/action.aclu.org\/site\/MessageViewer?dlv_id=69390&#038;em_id=69330.0\" target=\"_hplink\">cut its expensive death penalty<\/a>. Instead of cutting  programs emphasizing education, rehabilitation and addiction treatment, cut the  death penalty. The state would save $1 billion over five years without  releasing a single prisoner, including $400 million that would be saved by  eliminating a new facility planned for death row inmates. Thousands of  budget-minded Californians have joined our <a href=\"http:\/\/action.aclu.org\/site\/MessageViewer?dlv_id=69390&#038;em_id=69330.0\" target=\"_hplink\">CUT THIS<\/a> campaign.<\/p>\n<p>As I testified to the Californian Commission on the Fair Administration of  Justice in 2008: &quot;California&#8217;s  death penalty system is arbitrary, biased, expensive and susceptible to fatal  error. It cannot be fixed. It should not be tinkered with. It should be ended.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Ramona Ripston, Executive Director, ACLU of Southern California <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The California Supreme Court has just &#8216;sentenced&#8217; our state&#8217;s taxpayers to  an additional debt of at least $180,000 more per year. How? The state&#8217;s high  court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/local\/California-high-court-upholds-2-death-sentences-98573019.html\" target=\"_hplink\">upheld the death penalty<\/a> in two cases. <\/p>\n<p>Imposing the death penalty adds enormously to the cost of prosecution and  permanent lifetime housing for an inmate. The death penalty is certainly a  polarizing public policy issue, but I wonder how many people realize that it&#8217;s  also a vortex-like drain on their own pocketbooks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[2339,4607,2789,68,5590,9128],"class_list":["post-12169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","tag-2339","tag-4607","tag-2789","tag-68","tag-5590","tag-9128"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3ah","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}