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The Cost Issue in Pennsylvania

By Steve Hall

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer carries the editorial, "Dollars and death."Facing a massive and costly prison overcrowding problem, Pennsylvania has reached the point where the right moral course - ending capital punishment - coincides more than ever with the need to get the state's fiscal house in order. Space is so tight in the prisons that 2,000 inmates are being shipped to other states. Meanwhile, the state Corrections Department is seeking an 8.5 percent boost in its new budget - driving the annual cost to warehouse convicts to $1.9 billion. That equals 7 percent of all state spending. So the abolition of the death penalty proposed this month by state Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery) represents an effort, in part, to help reduce prison costs...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on March 30, 2010 (boomark / email).