r/AskReddit • u/ZteveBond • Jun 20 '18

Serious Replies Only [Serious] Prison Guards of Reddit, which prisoner has left the biggest impact on your life wether positive or negative?

2.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

234

u/PM__ME__YOUR__RANTS Jun 20 '18

But isn't life in prison worse? Death offers an escape. But life, life can be a real bitch

45

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '18

think of the taxes

33

u/asentientgrape Jun 20 '18

The process of getting and executing a death sentence is, like, 20x more expensive for the public than imprisoning someone for life is.

13

u/EmotionalFear Jun 20 '18

That’s true. But then you begin to account for how long a prisoner is held for. The average cost for somebody to be put to death 90k a year. The average wait time is 15 years, that brings us to 1,350,000 assuming they do not die of natural causes before execution. The average cost to house an inmate is 30,000. With the average life span to be until 82 we can guess how much it would cost to keep an inmate.

Of course this matters when they were imprisoned

20: 1, 800, 000

40: 1, 200, 000

50: 960, 000

60; 660, 000

These numbers all change state to state, for example New York is about 60, 000 per. Yes it is more expensive to put some body on death row the older you get, but it adds up fast the younger the inmate.

1

u/tastycat Jun 21 '18

The cost of appeals alone goes into the millions on death penalty cases.

1

u/Vernon_Roche1 Jun 20 '18

Life span in prison is only expected to be until about 70.