information which may help people make up their minds about whether or not capital

punishment keeps them safe, makes economic sense, or provides a satisfactory "closure" for the

victims of homicide. How, if at all, this information affects your response, either emotional or

political, to capital punishment remains entirely up to you.

The questions of fact concerning capital punishment fall into three general areas: does

capital punishment , freeing social resources for better purposes than warehousing and feeding

murders, or does it actually cost more, consuming resources that could go into preventing crime?

Does capital punishment strike fear into offenders, saving innocent lives by would-be killers?

And, finally, the courts make mistakes; what does capital punishment mean to an innocent

These questions fit together to define a complex problem. If experience showed capital

punishment saved lives by deterring offenders, the cost would not matter; a certainty that capital

punishment would save innocent lives might even make the risk of wrongful convictions

acceptable. If no risk at all existed of an error by th

per year; more than enough to support a "lifer" in jail indefinitely, with enough money left over

punishment saves innocent lives by deterring murder might matter less. And we cannot limit the

median of these estimates, we get about $425,000 to try each capital defendant.

abruptly, giving way to a continuing decline.

The following statistical summary offers fairly strong evidence for the proposition that

to go some distance toward hiring an additional jail guard or police officer.

the appeal courts will continue to invalidate about 30% of all death sentences, we can assume

that about 50% of all capital trials will result in an actual execution; so the actual cost of each

social factors. A society with the goal of protecting innocent people has no reason to institute

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)