On California's state propositions this year, Proposition 34 was proposed to repeal the option of the death penalty in California. Currently our state allows the death penalty as an option of punishment. Why bring the death penalty into question?
Annually, the death penalty costs California an approximated $184 million extra. This $184 million could essentially be put into baskets and thrown over the Golden Gate Bridge. Those who benefit from death row sentences are lawyers and criminals. Criminals are allowed multiple appeals, since they are facing death, and will most likely die a natural death before ever coming close to receiving capital punishment. The death penalty has only been used 13 times since 1978. The discontinuation of capital punishment would save California an estimated $1 billion every five or six years. Combing the fact that the death penalty is expensive and hardly ever used, why are we keeping it? State money should be used in so many other programs that desperately need funding, instead of wasting it on criminals that will essentially never receive the capital punishment we are paying for.
So why are people voting to keep capital punishment? It is possible that voters are not well informed about the death penalty in California. Some who feel wronged by crime are supporters of the death penalty out of vengeance. Others may feel safer knowing that California has the option of capital punishment for criminals well deserving of it. With dramatic campaigns from both candidates this year, some voters may have focused their energy into their presidential decision and taken a quick glance through the proposition section of the ballot just for completion purposes. A quick glance at the death penalty "yes" or "no" may have triggered a "sure, why not" response from voters.
Why do you think Californian's are voting to keep capital punishment? Is this beneficial to our state? If it is true that voters are uninformed about the cost and usage of the death penalty, does this have a greater reflection on proposition voting in California?
9 comments:
I was pretty surprised that while people voted to revise the Three Strikes Law (Prop 36) yet decided to leave the death penalty imposed. It wasn't exactly a slight margin, either. For the most part, there seems to be a decidedly fixed idea that capital punishment is equivalent to justice. While I hate acting the philosopher, Gandhi's quote, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," is relevant here. Prescribing the death penalty to a murderer does not help anybody, and it certainly won't bring somebody back from the dead.
I think that Californians voted to uphold the death penalty because execution isn't against the standard social norm. Our sense of justice is different than that of the Norwegians, who gave Anders Breivik a prison sentence of 21 years. And people found that satisfactory. So part of upholding capital punishment is definitely a cultural mentality.
Financially it makes far more sense to repeal the death penalty because it's such a drain on the state's budget. It's actually slightly counter-intuitive to uphold it.
"Make sure these criminals get what they deserve! Ignore the education budget so that my child gets a sub-par education, but for the love of God don't let these criminals live!" said anyone who decided to vote against Proposition 34.
Priorities. They do exist.
The ballot propositions for the most part, seem pretty reliable. If anything, this election cycle increased my faith in the proposition system because people managed to see through the veil of Prop 38 and voted overwhelmingly against it. That's a comfort. It's possible that if information about the cost and (lack of) use of the death penalty were more widespread more people would have opposed it.
Oh well. It's only 4 more years and $800 million until it can come up again.
First off, it seems apparent, based on the given statistics, that the death penalty is just silly. It causes us 184 million dollars a year, and we have only used it thirteen times since 1978? That's incredibly inefficient and it doesn't deserve to be a drain of our money.
I think that the most important reason that people may be apathetic to the death penalty is due to psychology. Morality in terms of one's psychology has been a heavily studied topic area. Although tests are far from perfect, test generally yield that people become more emotionally involved when in some sort of direct contact with another human. For example, would you let a single person die or let five other people die? Now, would you still let the five others live if you had to personally kill the single individual, say, by pushing him in front of a train? It's hard to say, but the decision would be much more difficult to make. Since there is a real interaction between you and the single individual, you have an actual connection between him and you; however, the other five strangers remain hypothetical, thus they are harder to have any sympathy for. You just don't care because they technically don't exist.
It's very much the same for the death penalty. It's very easy for people to think "I will never do anything which would lead to me being killed, and I don't care whether or not this criminal lives, why not just keep the death penalty?" Would there be a different response if the person had to know the criminal being sent to his or her death? Maybe. It may not change the result, but it certainly wouldn't be nearly as easy.
It seems a combination of this idea and ignorance of facts leads to the support of the death penalty. When individuals think, "why not just keep it?" they are ignoring the statistics--we don't use the death penalty, yet it costs us money. Even so, it would explain why people may still believe that the death penalty is necessary.
I find it interesting that much of the dialogue concerning the death penalty focuses on the economic benefits rather than the real moral argument behind repeal. I agree with James' assertion that the death penalty is rather futile, especially today. We should be more concerned with reducing crime and reforming criminals than killing them. I think life in prison sounds like a harsh enough punishment for any criminal because prisoners are denied many of their basic freedoms and rights. The death penalty, if you think about it, is highly inhumane and killing a person should be out of self defense, not in an act of revenge. Of course, in addition to being morally questionable,the death penalty costs millions and is rarely carried out, making it largely ineffective.
I was actually very surprised to learn that Californians chose not to repeal the death penalty because this is a fairly liberal state and I thought the economic argument would easily win out.
I believe its fair to say that the true cost of the death penalty was just unknown to most citizens.
When voting on ballot props they may not realize how much this death penalty costs us while truly not being applied in as many cases as believed.
The death penalty in a few cases is also a seeming "societal safety" so that those who really do "deserve it" will get "the punishment they deserve." Clearly, when the statistics are examined, this isn't the case at all.
Personally I feel its unfortunate that this penalty was not removed. Whether is a matter of the right public advocating of the issue or something else, this is one financial burden that shall remain.
There is only so much that one can do to educate voters on the issues brought up by the propositions. It is not the system here at fault, but perhaps the people who didn't learn as much about the topic as they could have.
While all the propositions may not have gone favorably, the system works. However, it'd work even better if more people understood the issues and the impact on themselves and other taxpayers or just other citizens.
What I'm still a little surprised at is the fact that we should never be in this situation in the first place. Since California has only put to death 13 inmates since 1978, it's no wonder why this system has failed. If the system was implemented and run like the people of California want it to be run, then maybe we wouldn't have these basketloads of money being thrown away. We have a system that isn't running like it should. It's holding inmates on death row that should have been put to death years ago. Instead, they're sitting around costing California millions. In this situation, I would say use it or lose it
I was also fairly surprised that prop 34 failed. I agree with Smita, in that I think it's possible that many voters didn't have all the information needed in order to make a decision on this proposition.
I think that once you look at the facts it's nearly impossible to be in support of the death penalty. Not only does the death penalty cost our state millions of dollars, its been proven to be racially biased (http://www.eji.org/deathpenalty/racialbias), class biased, and its hardly ever used.
It has been proven that if the victim of a murder is white, the murderer is much more likely to be given the death penalty than if the victim were of another race. Also on death row, more than half of the people are people of color, which is not representative of actual percentage of murderers who are people of color.
Also defendants who have a lot of money can hire good lawyers who can effectively defend them. While poorer defendants get public defenders who aren't as effective at defending their clients. This makes it so that richer defendants can often get lesser sentences than poorer defendants.
After knowing all this, I think its a little crazy that someone could reasonably choose to uphold the death penalty. I wish that that there was more information on why they made the decision that they did and I hope that the next time the death penalty is put on the ballot it will be repealed.
I think that voters choose to keep the death penalty because they have been influenced by their emotions. Personally, before I really learned about the death penalty, I wanted to keep it because I thought it meant that murderers would die and it would bring a kind of revenge for victims' families. It also brings a sense of safety, like Smita said, that those who deserve the death penalty receive it. But after learning about it, I've come to understand that the death penalty is not beneficial to our state. It costs millions of dollars more to keep a death row inmate in jail and taken care of than a normal life without parole inmate. Also, there is the question of whether the inmate is actually guilty. From 1973-2011, 130 death row inmates were found innocent before they were killed. That could have been 130 wrongful deaths if they were never exonerated. Now that I know much more about it, I agree with everyone else who has commented that the death penalty should have been repealed. It is a waste of money, especially since we've only used it 13 times in 34 years. With California's economy not doing so well, the money that could have been saved by repealing the death penalty could be put towards a much better use that helps rebuild the economy.
I think that voters didn't just not have enough information on the facts of death penalty in general, but also on the law itself. Most people who vote, just think of the 'get rid of death penalty' part. But it wasn't as advertised that the law would actually give $100 million to law enforcement agencies to solve the many many unsolved rapes and murders. I think that that is a really big part of the prop that many didn't even think about when casting the vote. Considering that most people on death row end up dying in jail anyways, passing prop 34 would have made a lot of sense. There were a lot of great outcomes of this election, I personally don't feel like this was one of them.
Big numbers might not overwhelm the word "repeal." A possible reason for why voters may have not reacted to the possibility of long term savings as a result of repealing the death penatly may be because a long term plan is not as compelling as short term costs. The one time 100$ million given to law enforcement agencies may have seemed too much of a tax on the people. I think this money is probably easily made up in a few years, but it's interesting wonder if people trust in long term projections, especially enough to do something as groundbreaking as repeal the death penalty.
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