Abolishing capital punishment should not even be an option. A certain kind of closure is provided for families of victims when the murderer of their loved one is executed. If society wants to keep the death penalty and eye for an eye punishment, then California needs to revise its policy on capital punishment by speeding up the process of execution, or we need to consider the measure for the sake of the state’s dwindling budget. 

Capital punishment is a subject that evokes many philosophies, ethics and emotions in people; it’s never simply black and white. Costs to taxpayers will always be an important factor to consider. 

Annually, California spends a minuscule amount per inmate on average compared to the amount spent for each individual death row inmate. The money for these condemned inmates goes towards trials, appeals, public defenders, housing blocks, doctors and the drugs administered for lethal injection. 

“It is  completely wasteful and counterproductive to public safety to spend our precious resources pretending we have a death penalty when we know the sentence won’t be carried out 99 percent of the time,” said former prison director and San Quentin warden Jeanne Woodford, who has overseen four of 13 executions in California since it’s reinstatement in 1978.

Capital punishment is a failed system and only exists on paper, as only 13 of 800 condemned inmates either die from natural causes or sickness during their average 25-year wait on death row, if they don’t get their cases reduced to life sentences. 

Our economy is in the tank and our state is downright broke to the point that state penitentiaries (prisoners included), are being sold to private prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America, according to a Huffington Post article. 

In the current system, no one is getting justice — especially not victims of violent crimes or their families.