Justified Murder

The United States of America holds the number one spot in quite an embarrassing statistic famously known to the rest of the world. As of July 2018, the United States is the country with the most incarcerated prisoners per capita. On top of that, the United States is one of the countries that allow the practice of capital punishment against its prisoners. Capital punishment, or punishment by death for serious crimes, is used in 54 other countries that execute their prisoners by hanging, using firing squads, or gas chambers. Gas chambers and lethal injections are the methods the United States use for its executions. This cruel method of punishment has not only drained the United States of tens of billions of dollars, but has become our way of justifying murder.

Aside from the normal high expenses it takes to keep just one prisoner behind bars, we must understand how much the United States is actually spending solely to kill our inmates. In Texas, a death penalty case can cost up to $2.3 million in taxpayer dollars, which is triple the amount spent to keep a prisoner in their cell for 40+ years. California death penalty costs can even go up to $4 billion given all the due processes. A death penalty case may also take very long periods time to complete in full, with some inmates having to wait decades for their turn on death row. With the great amounts of time and money we spend trying to kill our inmates, we clearly show that we value the act of murder over important and productive things like providing proper education and health care for our citizens. With that being said, capital punishment is just another factor preventing us from properly excelling as a country.