Costs

Overview

The death penal­ty is a moral issue for some and a pol­i­cy issue for oth­ers. However, it is also a gov­ern­ment pro­gram with relat­ed costs. Many peo­ple assume that the state saves mon­ey by employ­ing the death penal­ty since an exe­cut­ed per­son no longer requires con­fine­ment, health care, and relat­ed expens­es. But in the mod­ern appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, that assump­tion has been repeat­ed­ly proven to be wrong.

The death penal­ty is far more expen­sive than a sys­tem uti­liz­ing life-with­out-parole sen­tences as an alter­na­tive pun­ish­ment. Some of the rea­sons for the high cost of the death penal­ty are the longer tri­als and appeals required when a person’s life is on the line, the need for more lawyers and experts on both sides of the case, and the rel­a­tive rar­i­ty of exe­cu­tions. Most cas­es in which the death penal­ty is sought do not end up with the death penal­ty being imposed. And once a death sen­tence is imposed, the most like­ly out­come of the case is that the con­vic­tion or death sen­tence will be over­turned in the courts. Most defen­dants who are sen­tenced to death essen­tial­ly end up spend­ing life in prison, but at a high­ly inflat­ed cost because the death penal­ty was involved in the process.

The Issue

How much the death penal­ty actu­al­ly costs and how that com­pares to a sys­tem in which a life sen­tence is the max­i­mum pun­ish­ment can only be deter­mined by sophis­ti­cat­ed research and stud­ies, usu­al­ly at the state lev­el. Many such stud­ies have been con­duct­ed and their con­clu­sions are con­sis­tent: the death penal­ty impos­es a net cost on the tax­pay­ers com­pared to life with­out parole. The ques­tion is whether the assumed ben­e­fits of the death penal­ty are worth its costs and whether oth­er sys­tems might pro­vide sim­i­lar ben­e­fits at less cost. The assess­ments of law enforce­ment experts are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant in iden­ti­fy­ing what expen­di­tures are most effec­tive in reducing crime.

What DPIC Offers

This sec­tion con­tains sum­maries of each of the main cost stud­ies on the death penal­ty and links to many of the entire stud­ies. In addi­tion, DPI has pre­pared a num­ber of reports that relate to the ques­tion of costs and to the opin­ions of police chiefs and oth­er experts in this field.

Why is the death penalty so expensive?

• Legal costs: Almost all peo­ple who face the death penal­ty can­not afford their own attor­ney. The state must assign pub­lic defend­ers or court-appoint­ed lawyers to rep­re­sent them (the accept­ed prac­tice is to assign two lawyers), and pay for the costs of the pros­e­cu­tion as well.
• Pre-tri­al costs: Capital cas­es are far more com­pli­cat­ed than non-cap­i­tal cas­es and take longer to go to tri­al. Experts will prob­a­bly be need­ed on foren­sic evi­dence, men­tal health, and the back­ground and life his­to­ry of the defen­dant. County tax­pay­ers pick up the costs of added secu­ri­ty and longer pre-trial detention.
• Jury selec­tion: Because of the need to ques­tion jurors thor­ough­ly on their views about the death penal­ty, jury selec­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es is much more time con­sum­ing and expensive.
• Trial: Death-penal­ty tri­als can last more than four times longer than non-cap­i­tal tri­als, requir­ing juror and attor­ney com­pen­sa­tion, in addi­tion to court per­son­nel and oth­er related costs.
• Incarceration: Most death rows involve soli­tary con­fine­ment in a spe­cial facil­i­ty. These require more secu­ri­ty and oth­er accom­mo­da­tions as the pris­on­ers are kept for 23 hours a day in their cells.
• Appeals: To min­i­mize mis­takes, every pris­on­er is enti­tled to a series of appeals. The costs are borne at tax­pay­ers’ expense. These appeals are essen­tial because some inmates have come with­in hours of exe­cu­tion before evi­dence was uncov­ered prov­ing their innocence.