Time to Get Smart on Crime

We all want to live in safe communities. The truth about the death penalty is that is makes us less, not more, safe. Given the severe budget restraints that exist in our criminal justice system, it is high time to consider whether maintaining our costly and largely symbolic death penalty system is being smart on crime.

We are in a recession. The criminal justice system is hardly immune from the downturn in our economy. Police departments are cutting back, state employees are being furloughed, trials are being delayed, and layoffs are common in prosecutors’ and public defenders’ offices. The justice system was already overburdened—now it is being pushed to (and some would argue, past) the breaking point. The death penalty in this state is an enormously expensive and wasteful program with no clear benefits. All of the studies on the cost of capital punishment conclude it is much more expensive than a system with life sentences as the maximum penalty. Perhaps most importantly, the death penalty rarely results in what it promises.

In this state, only slightly more than 1% of the eligible cases results in an execution. Stated in the converse, we spend millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on a system that fails 99% of the time. We can no longer tolerate such wasteful spending. The death penalty without executions is a very expensive form of life without parole. We could redirect millions of taxpayers’ dollars every year to community safety and services for victims and still lock up murderers until their death if we ended the death penalty.

Over the last decade, opposition to the death penalty on practical grounds has grown rapidly. This Nation’s police chiefs rank the death penalty last in their priorities for effective crime reduction. The officers rate it as one of most inefficient uses of taxpayer dollars in fighting crime. Instead, lack of law enforcement resources, poor funding for drug and mental illness treatment, and crowded courts were listed as the problems that most need fixing. Sadly, these problems need fixing here, as recent events have vividly demonstrated.

Clearly, eliminating the death penalty cannot solve all of these problems, but the savings would be significant. Where comprehensive studies have been done, the excess expenditures per year for the death penalty typically are close to $10 million per state. If a new police officer (or teacher, or ambulance driver) is paid $40,000 per year, this death penalty money could be used to fund 250 additional workers in each state to secure a better community.

In 2009, eleven state legislatures considered bills to end capital punishment and its high costs were part of these debates. As the economic crisis continues, the trend of states reexamining the death penalty in light of its costs is expected to continue. It is time for Washington to join this growing list.