Lifelong Solitary Confinement vs The Death Penalty

A few weeks ago I read an article on Yahoo! saying that ending the death penalty could save millions of dollars:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091020/ts_alt_afp/usexecutionjustice.

Being a lifelong pro-death-penalty advocate myself, I found the article enlightening.  And it served to convince me that maybe the death penalty isn't the best use of our tax dollars after all.

I think, like most people, that my support for the death penalty lay in the notion of equal justice ie. "an eye for an eye."  If you kill someone heinously, and intentionally, you don't deserve to live.  You should die.  And if you could die in the same way you killed your victim(s), even better.  That would be ideal.  But the thing is, that doesn't happen. 

Ideally, evil people deserve to die so that they can never hurt anyone again.  But who is truly evil?  There are always extenuating circumstances - like abusive parents, a lack of education, mental disease - that lead some people to be more likely to kill.  And then, justice is rarely applied with equal force.  If you're poor or black, you're more likely to be sentenced to death than if you're white or rich.

My friend, when I told her about the high cost of execution, argued that it was worth it because it deters people from committing murder.  But I countered that it really doesn't.  Because as I said, if I was thinking of murdering someone, I wouldn't consider that I would get caught.  Because if I considered I would get caught, I wouldn't do it.  Plain and simple.  Regardless of the penalty.  The other thing is that, the death penalty is used so rarely (how many executions do you remember in your state?), that it becomes ineffective.  I read a study that in order for it to be truly effective, we would have to put people to death for the smallest of crimes - like stealing a loaf of bread.  And every time.  No leniency.  Then, and only then, would it be an effective deterrent because people would be afraid of doing anything wrong.  But as it is now, you always have extenuating circumstances, and if you get a good lawyer and a sympathetic jury, chances are good you'll avoid a death sentence. 

My friend then suggested that we limit the number of appeals that death row convicts can make.  A point others have made.  Indeed, the appeals are the reason why applying the death penalty costs so much.  But as it said in the above mentioned article, that would raise the chance that we would put an innocent person to death, and we can't do that.  There have been a number of death row cases cleared because of DNA evidence.  Imagine if we had put those innocent people to death.  Imagine how many innocent people have died for other people's crimes.

So, in my mind, I have begun turning in a way I never thought I would before - against the death penalty.  Maybe it's the sign of the times that I think money matters more than putting someone to death.  When we are facing so many budget crises, does it make sense to put so much money towards people who already hurt our society in one way?  Isn't that them hurting us twice - if they're truly guilty - by committing the crime and then making us pay for them to pay for it?  That money could go towards much better use - to medical research, to aid children and families, to educate people - why should we use it on someone who isn't deserving of it?

And that was when I thought that lifelong solitary confinement might be a better punishment.  My friends decried the idea when I told them, saying we don't have enough space or money for everyone to be in solitary confinement.  But I brought up the fact that the death penalty costs millions, more than an extra cell would.  And then my other friend argued that it wouldn't solve the problem of money because if people were sentenced to lifelong solitary they would keep appealing their sentences much like death row inmates.  But I countered that if they were indeed sentenced to solitary, they couldn't appeal their sentences nearly as much.  The reason death row inmates get so many appeals is because the state doesn't want to put someone innocent to death.  But they wouldn't have to worry about that if the person were to remain alive.  Imagine if every convict kept appealing their sentences, I said.  It would drown the judicial system.  But since they're not going to be put to death - a thing that cannot be undone - there's no reason for them to keep appealing.

The idea that a truly rotten criminal would not be able to have any sort of human contact, any sort of life at all, and that they would wake up each day to nothingness until their inevitable end makes me ok with it as a replacement for the death sentence.  And if they are innocent, they would still live to be exonerated one day, and their time alone hopefully would have served some benefit to them (like Captain Coffee in my post: The Need for Meditation & Self-Reflection).

Since my idea is in the minority, and my idea, it probably will not come to pass any time soon.  I am not against some sort of capital punishment, but if it costs us too much, I am up for replacing it with a better alternative.  After all, if we abolished the death penalty and had more money to spend on freeways, therefore lightening your commute to work - wouldn't that be a better benefit to society?

In the end I think we really need to evaluate the price we pay to make others pay.