On Wednesday, March 13th, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom put a temporary end to the death penalty, sparing the lives of 737 inmates on death row. The death penalty is one of the many controversial topics in today’s society, right alongside the issue of abortion and cultural appropriation, which is part of the reason why there have been no actual deaths since 2006 (along with ongoing legal challenges). Newsom claimed that California’s death penalty system has been “a failure” and further justified his decision by stating “the intentional killing of another person is wrong”. However, the solution to the issue of a “failing” death penalty is not to stop it altogether, instead of revisiting the issue of the death penalty to ensure that it continues to be in place and common use across the United States.

For one, the death penalty has to remain in place for the reason that victims’ families need a sense of conclusion after heinous crimes are committed at the stake of their loved ones. A serial rapist should be killed versus given leniency and a life sentence. One may argue that a life sentence is a harder thing to go through and that instead, all people that would be given the death penalty should receive a life sentence. However, this provides no resolution in these crimes committed and puts the general prison population at risk.

To elaborate, prisoners are people too. Putting someone serving two to six years in a California prison for burglary in the first degree in the same commonplace as a serial rapist or a serial killer simply puts everyone at risk, instead of simply neutralizing a threat before allowing them to permanently damage or end the lives of any more people. It’s illogical and immoral to have a person serving a couple of years in prison in the same cell as a mass murderer or rapist of countless women and/or men.

Finally, the charge of keeping these killers and rapists alive is far greater than the alternative. According to www.lao.ca.gov, the cost to incarcerate a single prisoner in California for one year is $81,000, a charge is given to the taxpayer. This is the highest yearly fund used for each prisoner in the U.S. In addition, the price to maintain each death row prisoner for a year is about $90,000 more than a normal prisoner, according to www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.  Alternatively, according to www.politifact.com, the price spent on each K-12 student each year in California is about $10,291. Some may argue that the fact that having prisoners on death row is so much more expensive should be seen as a reason to not have the death penalty active at all, but again, the solution is to expedite the process of the death penalty to ensure justice is served. Another issue is the differences in money allotted to students versus prisoners; if someone can’t see a problem with spending almost eight times as much on a cold-blooded killer per year than a student looking for a good life in the future, then they have to get their eyes checked. This is obviously another thing to change about our prison system.

The idea that we should provide these criminals with the gift of life after they ruined so many others is morally flawed. Although the death penalty should absolutely be revised and extensively revamped to ensure that cruel and unusual punishment doesn’t occur and prisoners are dealt with quickly to benefit the taxpayer, the system must remain in place to get these killers off of the Earth and put into hell where they belong.

The opinions in this article are held by the writer and not the Taft Tribune.