SOCIAL COSTS OF THE DEATH PENALTY

In addition to being an excessive financial cost, the death penalty system also has social costs. Social costs, or opportunity costs, represent how tax revenue could have been spent with the savings gained by not using the death penalty.

Only smaller counties who cannot afford to pay the full costs of death penalty cases get reimbursed by the state. Larger counties, like San Diego, pay for trial costs out of pocket by taking additional money from the county's general fund, which is also reserved for such things as emergency services, health and human services, schools, and libraries.

Last year, San Diego County suffered 111 murders. The $1.1 million in county taxpayer money used every year since 2000 on death penalty trials could have funded the annual salaries of 22 additional deputy sheriffs to promote public safety. It could have also funded the annual salaries of 20 additional firefighters or could have bought 2 new fire engines a year, which are desperately needed in a region that regularly suffers from devastating and life-threatening fires.

With our death penalty tax dollars, the county could have better funded critical health and human services. At an average flu vaccination cost of $11.85, the county could have paid for 93,000 influenza vaccinations a year. Or it could have funded the annual salaries of 14 registered nurses or 7 family physicians.

The county could have also used death penalty dollars to fund the annual salaries of 26 newly credentialed teachers in the county school district.

Community services, like public libraries, are also shortchanged by the costs of the death penalty. For example, the county library system, which is particularly important in the more rural and poorer areas of the county, could have purchased every year 52,132 children's books or 44,000 audio books for the elderly and visually impaired. Alternatively, it could have funded the annual salaries of 23 new librarians to meet the library service needs of the population.

At a time when we are closing libraries, laying off teachers and cutting the budgets for health and human services and for emergency services, does it make sense to continue to use our valuable tax dollars to pursue the death penalty?

San Diego Taxpayers have the Right to Know How Their Taxes are Spent!

The full costs of the death penalty to local taxpayers is unclear. While we can conservatively estimate financial and social (opportunity) costs, we cannot not know the true burden of the death penalty without a full disclosure of what public money is spent on death penalty trials.

Currently, San Diego County does not disclose, and potentially does not even track, the complete costs of death penalty trials. As taxpayers of San Diego, we ask you to join us as we call upon county officials to disclose death penalty costs, so the true financial impact to local taxpayers can be fully understood.

SOURCES