Death Penalty Abolishment Essay

In today’s world, money is a source for mostly everything. It is what keeps food on the table and what keeps most people going to work. With how hard people work to earn and maintain an income, it would be nice to know where the money taken in taxes goes. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (2014), the United States spent 50 billion dollars on the Department of Corrections. 35% of that total was used for capital punishment cases, which totals out to 17.5 billion dollars used in one year towards capital punishment in the United States. A large portion of those funds being used are coming from state and federal taxes collected from hard working U.S. citizens. That 17.5 billion dollars could be used for much better things then court cases. State legislatures still allowing the death penalty need to abolish the practice period to lower state taxes, fix prison structures, and help redirect funds to better locations. The complete abolishment of capital punishment would be a large driving force to lower state taxes. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the average state tax for middle class families or individuals is 9%. (2014). Using California as an example, out of that 9%, 3% goes to the states Department of Corrections. Out of that 3%, 2% of that is fed into public defenders, court room hearings and cases, extra security for death row inmates, as well as their food, living quarters, and special transportation. That is a lot of costly measures for a single person when you look at numbers. In regards to where the rest of those taxes goes, .5% goes to public safety, .25% goes towards state education services, and 1% goes towards public transportation (California Board of Equalization, 2014). If the state continues to use executions as a method of punishment, the percentage going towards corrections will only rise. If it continues to rise, either taxes will go up or the state will have to pull from education, emergency responders, and public transportation. If you look at the state of Michigan, who did abolish capital punishment, income tax is a little different. According to Michigan’s Department of Treasury (2014), the income tax is 7% for middle class families and individuals. Of that already lower 7%, only 1.55% goes towards the state’s Department of Corrections, with .75% going towards education and .75% going towards public safety. Taxes will always be there  and likely b e somewhat high but the states without capital punishment generally have a lower rate with better allocation of the funds. Capital punishment is creating an atmosphere of higher costs all around, which have to come from somewhere. Current prison structures are taking a large hit due to capital punishment that usually goes unseen. Unfortunately it takes a major issue such as a prison guard’s death to point out the prison structure issues. The average guard to inmate ratio varies from state to state. In the best conditions the guard to inmate ratio will be 1:5, in worse case situations, some states are currently 1:20. Whereas some states require a minimum of 1:1 guard to inmate ratio for death row inmates (Mitchell, 2012). Those guards are being paid next to nothing compared to the costs taking place around them. Taking a look at what it costs to maintain a prison can be staggering. It costs an average of about $47,000 per year to incarcerate an inmate in prison in California (Edwards, 2009). That number skyrockets for a death row inmate. California taxpayers pay $90,000 more per death row prisoner each year than on prisoners in regular confinement (Mitchell, 2012). With just over 3,000 people on death row, that places a yearly $270,000,000 extra that has to be placed on death row inmates. That extra money is needed for the court hearings, extra security, singled out specific cells, and an entire area of a prison just for them. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time someone spends on death row is 14 years (2011). If you take the 14 year average, each death row inmate is costing their state roughly $1,260,000 prior to execution. If the total amount of death row inmates is taken into account, it is costing the nation’s tax payers roughly 3.78 billion dollars over the course of 14 years to follow through with the â€Å"quick fix† to murderers. Those funds could help restructure the prisons, creating a safer environment for the guards to be in. According to Ron McAndrew (2014), a former state prison warden, â€Å"Guards are never in a fair game situation, they are trained to be outnumbered, which is a horrible thing to think about, we are hiring them and placing them in that kind of situation because we do not have a choice.† Removing capital punishment allows for the removal of death row. If death row is removed, it would allow all those extra security measures and guards to be used for general population and overall prison security. With all the money being spent on capital punishment related issues, the complete abolishment  of it would allow states to place that money where it would greatly help. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks 33 in reading, 27 in math, and 22 in science amongst the rest of the countries in the world (2011). Imagine what some of that money being used for capital punishment could do for the United States as a whole when put into education. A portion of the extra money could potentially be put towards emergency responder services. Those funds could cause faster response times, better equipment, and better and more frequently trained personnel. As a whole that could potentially save lives. Another area that would better tremendously due to the relocation of funds is medical facilities. Most medical facilities in the United States are always understaffed, underpaid, and have issues maintaining. Lives could potentially be lost due to slow response times or understaffed hospitals (Sarat, 2009). The funds could go towards providing better public transportation or for some states, providing it p eriod. That money could also clean up streets, provide better roadways, and overall safer environments on roads. It could even be used to provide more jobs for a state or not be used at all and go back into the taxpayer’s pocket. Any of those options are far better than spending millions of dollars to â€Å"dispose† of a violent criminal. Just allow him to live his life out in prison. When you simplify all of the statistics and information, it comes down to a substantial amount of money being pushed into capital punishment that comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket and goes into an unnecessary location. Even though more and more states are slowly abolishing the death penalty it is still staggering how much it is costing the country as a whole. That money could do so much more for those affected states and the state services they provide to the public. So if state legislatures abolish the death penalty, it could lower state taxes, help correct issues in prison structures and help redirect funds to where they are needed. References Mitchell, P. (2008, June). Death Penalty Debacle. Retrieved August 15, 2014, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/LoyolaCalifCosts.pdf Edwards, A. (2009, February). Annual Cost to Incarcerate. In Criminal Justice and Judiciary. Retrieved August 16, 2014, from http://www.lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost Snell, T. (2014, May). Capital Punishment Statistical Tables. In Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved August 17, 2014, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/cp12st.pdf Sarat, A. (2008). Is the Death Penalty Dying?. Amsterdam: Elsevier JAI. Horton, J. E. (2014, January). Detailed Description of the Sales & Use Tax Rate. In California State Board of Equalization. Retrieved September 1, 2014, from http://www.boe.ca.gov/news/sp111500att.htm White, G. (2014, January). Michigan Equalization Information 2014. In Michigan Department of Treasury. Retrieved September 2, 2014, from http://www.michigan.gov/taxes/0,4676,7-238-43535_43537-154825–,00.html McAndrew, R. (2014, October 23) From Executioner to Advocate – Ron McAndrew Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Ld9ffm_pY

Denial of Service Attacks (DoSs) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

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Rationale - Antigone Essay Example for Free

Rationale Antigone Essay For our scripted piece we used a scene from Antigone. Originally written by Greek author, Sophocles about 2500 years ago, it was re-written by a French author called Jean Anouilh around the time of WWII. Anouilh’s intensions differed from that of Sophocles due to the difference in time periods; in the later version, Antigone represents the French resistance against the Nazi occupation. As it was written during WWII it took a long time for the Nazis to allow it to go onstage because of what Antigone represented. The reason they let it be performed was down to the character Creon, the king of Thebes. In the scene between him and Antigone, the Nazis thought the dialogue represented a point of view that was for a dictatorial society. Antigone tells the story of a girl, whose brothers fought over the throne, both brothers met their end, introducing a theme of death due to rivalry and jealousy. Eteocles, the brother who had the throne at the time, was given a proper burial, whereas Polynices, who was seen as the enemy, was left outside and refused a burial. Everyone in the city of Thebes was told by the new king, Creon, that anyone who attempted to bury Polynices would be put to death, creating the theme of loyalty. Antigone is adamant that Polynices should be given a burial and takes matters into her own hands, she sneaks out of the palace in the middle of the night and covers Polynices’ body over with dirt. Polynices is then uncovered by the Guard. Antigone finds out and again, attempts to cover over Polynices. This time she is discovered by the Guard and is taken to Creon. As Antigone is the former king’s daughter, Creon is hesitant when punishing her, and offers a way out. But Antigone is not ashamed of what she has done and is determined to be punished for her crime. At the end of the play Antigone is put in cave by the Guard and left there to die. We chose this play as it contains many themes, such as love, pride, anger, and loyalty. Also I liked the history behind the play, the story that wasn’t included within the script. The life of Oedipus, Antigone’s father, the prophecy that he heard and how he married his mother and as a result had four children. I liked it because it was unusual, complex and difficult to fully understand. One moral I think Antigone portrays quite well is that you should always stand up for what you believe in and what you think is right. It shows this through Antigone’s character and the fact that she is so headstrong and certain of what she wants. Also an issue that is portrayed throughout the play is that love is a very strong emotion and can overcome many situations, this is shown by the relationships between Antigone and her sister Ismeme, Antigone and her nurse and Antigone and her fiance Haemon. My chosen scene included Antigone and Nurse, who was trying to find out where Antigone had been in the night. It was the opening scene of the play and was very powerful as it introduced the character of Antigone and the relationship she has with Nurse. I played Nurse and my partner, Frances, played Antigone. I chose to play Nurse because she tries many different ways to get Antigone to tell her where she has been. She tries to make Antigone feel guilty, by saying â€Å"You half kill yourself to bring them up, and they’re all the same. † She also gets angry with Antigone, this is evident when she says â€Å"do you know what I ought to do? I ought to give you a good spanking, just like when you were a little girl. † Another tactic she employs is that of trying to make Antigone feel sympathetic towards her by saying â€Å"What would your mother say if she were here now? You silly old fool, she’d say. So you couldn’t keep my little girl virtuous for me? † I knew that these tactics would enable me to change the tone of my voice throughout the performance and use a variety of space. By playing Nurse I intended to portray the relationship that Antigone and Nurse possessed. I also wanted to improve on my interaction as an actor and by playing this part it enabled me to build on what I was already capable of. When I first read the scene I imagined the two characters in a grand bedroom that had a very old fashioned interior, such as what one would expect to see in a stately home. A room that was quite cluttered with elaborate ornaments and decorative pieces. Obviously this would be hard to create on a small stage and also it would restrict the amount of space that was available for moving in. Devised-Behind the Face Our devised piece was based on many themes taken from Antigone, such as loyalty, cruelty and pride but the main theme was anger. I chose to base it upon anger because there are many different ways to portray it and there are lots of different ways of dealing with it. This gave me a wide range of options to choose from when devising the piece. I researched anger and it’s causes and came up with many different results, for instance: There are three different types of anger: Rage Rage is the expression of violent, uncontrolled anger. Rage is an outward expression of anger and can result in a visible, often destructive, explosion. Resentment Resentment is the feeling of anger directed towards a person or object which is suppressed and kept inside. It is a feeling which smoulders and feels uncomfortable, and can possibly create more physiological and psychological damage. Indignation Indignation is regarded as an appropriate, controlled, positive type of anger. When writing my devised piece I wanted to put across that you should let out your anger and stand up for what you think is right so I decided on a story line that contained a young girl (Harriett) who knew what she wanted but was too scared to stand up for herself. This resulted in her becoming angry internally, but she was unable to let go of her anger and express herself. So I created another character that only she could hear. This character was the internal anger that Harriett was feeling, and tried to make her see that she had to let go of her anger and stand up for herself rather than being pushed around by everyone else because she was an easy target. I chose to play an emotion instead of a person because I wanted to portray the differences between each aspect of the emotion. I wanted to create three sections on the stage so we weren’t just using a small part of it, however still allowing for use of most of the space available. 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