If we can’t help them or don’t have resources to make helping them cost effective and they can’t work enough to give us a profit, kill them. Dragging it out is just a mild cruelty in most cases. I only want to keep them alive if they can pay for themselves.
One of the most common counterarguments to this from those opposed to the death penalty (see here for an illustration) is that capital penalties are irreversible and permanent, while imprisonment can be reversed. This poses serious trouble when you recognize the criminal justice system is imperfect and miscarriages of justice can occur, running the risk of killing innocents with regularity.
Estimates of the percentage of US citizens convicted and sentenced to the death penalty who were actually innocent and would have been exonerated eventually if their sentence had been commuted to life in prison are around 4%.
One of the most common counterarguments to this from those opposed to the death penalty (see here for an illustration) is that capital penalties are irreversible and permanent, while imprisonment can be reversed. This poses serious trouble when you recognize the criminal justice system is imperfect and miscarriages of justice can occur, running the risk of killing innocents with regularity.
Estimates of the percentage of US citizens convicted and sentenced to the death penalty who were actually innocent and would have been exonerated eventually if their sentence had been commuted to life in prison are around 4%.