death or free bed and breakfast?

[mala]

just been watching some political thing on the telly about the death sentance.

tax payers have to -

pay for the ambulance

the police

the magistrates and the court system

and then have to pay for 20 or 30 years worth of b&b including sat telly and stuff.





or.

10p for a bullet.


what do you think.

[Finless]

Originally Posted by mala

just been watching some political thing on the telly about the death sentance.

tax payers have to -

pay for the ambulance

the police

the magistrates and the court system

and then have to pay for 20 or 30 years worth of b&b including sat telly and stuff.





or.

10p for a bullet.


what do you think.

10p? FFS, whats wrong with a blunt implement?

[Fiji Dave]

Mala,
Putting aside for a moment the moral/ethical arguments for/against the death penalty - let's take it down to finances as that's what you seem concerned with .

surely the actual number of poeple who would "qualify" for the death sentence would be a small fraction of the total number of people in the prison system at any one time? Current prison population is around 82000, so to save just 1% of the costs of keeping people in prison you'd have to be executing 820 people a year... sounds quite a lot... and here's a little comparison for you...

The USA executed just 53 people in 2006, and only around 1100people since 1976. In 2005 the US jail population stood at 2.1million.

So, those numbers again..... 53... out of 2,100,000 They executed 0.000025% of the prison population... Same percentage here would mean 2 executions - you're not really going to be saving very much are you?

So, the savings wold be very small in relation to the running of the rest of the prison system. The cost of keeping someone in prison a few years back was about 40k a yr, so you've saved 80k year
80,000 pounds spread between the (approx)30million tax payers in the UK
That's 0.266pence each each year - I think we can stretch to that.


Then of course you have to add the cost of compensating the familes for those people who you wrongly execute. Here's just a quick list of people who could well have "qualified" over the past 30 or so years- just pulling famous names out of a hat...
Birmingham 6 - wongly convicted of terrorist bombings
Guildford 4 - wrongly convicted of terrorist bombings
Bridgewater 4 (only 3 lived through the 18 yrs they were in jail) - wrongly convicted of murder
Stefan Kiszko - worngly convicted of murder
Angela Canning - wrongly convicted of killing her babies.

Just there you have 15 people who's families would have a pretty strong case for fairly substantial compensation. You may put a price of 10p on the life of a guilty person... but what value do you put on the life of an innocent person? And that's just a very quick list, there could be many more.
say you give each of their families 1.5million in compensation - not very much IMHO for having your loved one taken away and killed, but just as an example - You've exectued 15 people, saving yourself 600,000 pounds a year in prison costs.
You've then paid out 22.5million in compensation because you got it wrong...

... and you now have to fund a new investigation and a new trial...

[DIVE BUDDHA]

can i vote for the bullet option !

definatly seems the cheaper alternative

[SilvaFish]

Originally Posted by DIVE BUDDHA

can i vote for the bullet option !

definatly seems the cheaper alternative

<shakes head>

<bangs head on table>

and 10p turns into a few million quid if the justice system gets it wrong...

[DIVE BUDDHA]

Originally Posted by SilvaFish

<shakes head>

<bangs head on table>

and 10p turns into a few million quid if the justice system gets it wrong...

lets hope they dont get it wrong then lou!

[SilvaFish]

Originally Posted by DIVE BUDDHA

lets hope they dont get it wrong then lou!

Refer to the third post.

[SoggyFox]

Fcuk the finances, why the hell are we letting these abhorent people live at all. I'd pay twice as much to rid our society of peadophiles, serial murderers and serial rapists. I don't care what the wishy washy hand wringing brigade say those people never had so much as a thought for the human rights of their victims so why on earth should we uphold their human rights.

[Kalahari Diver]

Because we don't actually want to descend to their level?

David.

[SoggyFox]

Originally Posted by Kalahari Diver

Because we don't actually want to descend to their level?

sorry but that just doesn't wash at all. We can invade a country but can't kill a serial paedophile.