- What the Time article claims: The death penalty is six to eight times more expensive than life without parole. The sources for this information include a reporter's research, a federal commission, and a university study.
- What the DPIC claims: Just 2 percent of counties in the US account for over half of death penalty cases while nearly all death penalty cases originate in just 20% of counties.
My own synthesis:
A variety of sources indicate that the death penalty is far more expensive than life without parole. David van Drehle in his Time article opposing the death penalty argued that life in prison without parole is far less expensive than imposing the death penalty. His own research shows that, in Florida, the death penalty is six times more expensive than life without parole while a government commission found that imposing a death sentence is eight times more expensive than a life sentence. A study conducted at Duke University indicated that North Carolina could save 11 million dollars per year by abolishing the death penalty.
Not only is the death penalty costly, those costs are imposed on taxpayers in an inequitable way. A position paper by the DPIC shows that just 2% of U.S. counties impose over half of the death sentences. Furthermore, all death penalty cases originate from just 20% of U.S. counties. Since prisons housing death row inmates are financed by the state rather than the county, taxpayers living in the 80% of counties that do not impose the death penalty are forced to share the financial burdens created by the 20%. Thus, money that could have gone to schools, hospitals, and prenatal care for poor women goes to pay the costs of appeals that are an inherent part of the death penalty process.
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Note the following:
- Each paragraph has a topic sentence. In this sample, the topic sentences are the first sentences in the paragraph.
- Note that the topic sentence of the second paragraph also contains a transition linking the two paragraphs. The phrase "The death penalty is not only costly," refers to the argument of the first paragraph but then leads the reader into the new idea that the death penalty is also inequitable.
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