The hidden costs of the death penalty: California
The California death penalty costs well over a $100 million each year. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California will release in a few hours will release “The Hidden Death Tax” looking at records of actual trial expenses and state budgets to calculate the real world fiscal costs of California’s death chamber. Specifically:
• California taxpayers pay at least $117 million each year post-trial seeking execution of the people currently on death row;
• Executing all of the people currently on death row, or waiting for them to die there of other causes, will cost California an estimated $4 billion more than if they had been sentenced to die in prison of disease, injury, or old age;
• California death penalty trials have cost as much as $10.9 million.
“The Hidden Death Tax” concludes that not enough is being done to track death penalty expenses. The report recommends tracking more of these costs to provide greater transparency and accountability for a system that costs California hundreds of millions.
Download the Full Report
Download the Executive Summary
“A second ACLU of Northern California report, “Death by Geography,” also to be released Friday, reveals that the vast majority of California counties have largely abandoned seeking execution in favor of simply sentencing people to die in prison. Just ten counties continue to aggressively sentence people to death row, accounting for nearly 85 percent of death sentences since 2000.” Full Report // Executive Summary
Monday, 31. March 2008 21:40
[...] ACLU released a report calculating the actual cost of California’s death penalty. Answer: It’s very [...]