Three Squares and a Room

In the United States of America, our prison population is 2,300,000 and the average cost per inmate is $35,...  the cost to maintain our prison is the burden of taxpayers and as of the writing of this article only 45 of 50 States have prisons...  even though all States have jails in which people are kept for crimes until they are sentenced...

But, the bigger question here is not so much whether it is right or wrong to keep people in prison who have committed crimes, but to take another person's life by having a DEATH PENALTY.  In 2020, there were 2,553 DEATH ROW INMATES.  In case you are interested, it costs $1.26 million per inmate to implement the death penalty which includes the cost of a trial, jail time, and the actual execution.  And...  the median cost to keep an inmate in jail until they are released is $740,000.

While there is a rather large price tag to put an inmate to death, the greater question here is the MORAL IMPLICATIONS of killing another person, even after they have killed one or more individuals which landed them in jail in the first place.  Of course, there is also the facts surrounding the case and how terrible or horrific the actual crime was or was not.

Should we take another person's life?