I was given the con side of the death penalty to argue once in forensics. I was actually pro death penalty and one reason was that I thought it was cheaper. I went to do research on this because it was certainly a point I’d have to contend with from the pro side.

It is vastly more expensive to execute a prisoner than to imprison them for life. https://ejusa.org/resource/wasteful-inefficient/

Now you might think, hey that’s a link to a group that wants to get rid of the death penalty, of course they are going to say it’s more expensive. Go read the studies, I did, and again and again it is far more expensive to execute.

Why? Because we, pretty reasonably, put a high burden in front of the state before we allow them to kill a citizen. The legal process for both reaching the death penalty and then the numerous appeals to that decision is not cheap. It is a massive cost that the taxpayer has to bear to uphold the ruling and actually carry out the execution.

So it is far cheaper to house a person for life, and this shouldn’t really be that shocking. The prisons are built, the daily care of a prisoner is minimal, we provide them with the barest living conditions and food. The number of people we even could execute is a tiny percent of the prison population, so it’s not like they are taking up some huge amount of space and require us to build huge facilities to house them. If you could thanos snap every prisoner that could reasonably be executed out of existence, you wouldn’t free up enough prison housing space to close even a single facility, even more so when you consider that these prisoners are a handful in each facility.

The danger with “common sense” things that confirm our beliefs is that they can be wrong. The world is more complicated than it seems. I used to believe that it was cheaper to execute than to house. I was forced to argue the other side and because I’m competitive and want to win I did the research. I’m glad I did, it taught me an important lesson in not just believing something because it felt obviously correct.

All told, I’m not really sure I’m even against the death penalty. Some people are irredeemable and their deaths don’t weigh heavy on me. On the other hand, the idea of making it any easier for the state to execute me if they want to is unsettling. The common arguments in favor of the death penalty don’t really hold up. I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe the person is going to some eternal torture, they simply cease to exist. And it’s more expensive. From a practical standpoint I see little benefit for imposing the death penalty, but I understand the point of view of people being so reprehensible they don’t deserve to live even if it’s a high cost on society.

If you would like to continue arguing in favor of the death penalty though, you’ll do yourself a favor to go research the subject. It is more complicated and nuanced than you might think at first glance. And at the end of the day, if the thing you care about is cost, you’d never execute another person. It is far far more expensive to execute a prison than to house them.