Capital Punishment

To kill or not to kill, that is the question.

Adam Liptak bases his article on money, much like the rest of the U.S. government. He was able to capture a few economist takes on the issue and how they think capital punishment should be dealt with.

As the article reads, according to recent studies, execution works, saving 3-18 lives for every death and that overall, across the country, murder rates tend to fall as execution rises. However, many of these economist who have done several studies proving that capital punishment is affective, still morally don't agree with the concept; ie....one economist said they are opposed to the death penalty, even though their study showed capital punishment save about 5 lives.

As much as people are morally against it, they are economically against it as well. Liptak asks, "A single capital litigation can cost more than $1 million. It is at least possible that devoting that money to crime prevention would prevent more murders than whatever number, if any, an execution would deter." This may be true, but some argue that they don't want their tax dollars to be wasted on criminals sitting in jail.

Morally, I don't think that capital punishment is right, however if it is preventing more crimes than how can we stop doing it?

It is a hard topic to judge because of morality, so I think we should look at this from an economical stand point. If it is costing us too much money to execute them, then we shouldn't. But is it fair that law abiding citizens must pay for murderers, who will most likely be there for the rest of their life, to sleep and eat together?