Today, Governor Brown announced that he would be taking 48,000 cell phones away from state employees, in order to reduce costs.
"In the face of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, a cell phone may not seem like a big expense. But spending $20 million, and perhaps far more than that, on cell phones can't be justified," he said. You know what would save even more money? Repealing the death penalty.
That's exactly what the Illinois legislature did today. And what did they cite as the reason, beyond just innocent people being sentenced to death? The cost of killing people for their crimes.
"Illinois has spent over $100 million in 10 years and hasn't put anyone to death," said a sponsor of the Illinois bill, State Rep. Karen Yarbrough, a Democrat. "It's time to put this barbaric practice to rest."
As states struggle to cope with major budget shortfalls and even the prospect of bankruptcy, they're confronting the fact that sentencing someone to death is extremely expensive.
In California, for example, a 2008 report showed that the $137 million annual cost of maintaining the criminal justice system would drop to just $11.5 million annually if the death sentence were abolished.
$125.5 million dollars is a whole heck of a lot more than $20 million from taking away cell phones from state workers and likely reducing their effectiveness.
What I want to know is how many kids will go without health care because the state wants to keep killing people?
Talk about fiscal irresponsibility...
Source: City Watch, January 14, 2011
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