Each inmate costs around $20,000 a year to incarcerate, and older inmates cost more than that - some estimates put that latter figure closer to $50,000.
Each.
Now, that's a total cost of incarceration and includes the costs of facilities, but that's still a hefty amount of money for a person you're going to put away forever and never let out again anyway - and never try to rehabilitate.
On top of that, you have lifers with nothing to lose interacting with the rest of the prison population. If life in prison, the worst punishment they're ever going to receive, has already been handed to them, what's to stop one from doing something heinous while in prison?
If nothing else, death should still be an option, even if it is only one handed to criminals who are already in prison. |
