Many people think that the death penalty is the least expensive punishment, which is nothing more than the cost of a bullet, and keeping criminals in prison will consume a lot of manpower, financial resources and material resources of the country. The latter is true (it is said that one less person can provide four more children with Hope Primary School), while the former is not.

Firstly, this paper excludes the discussion of a question: whether the state has the right to kill legally, that is, the legitimacy of the death penalty. Because if we can demonstrate and truly believe the following proposition: even for a murderer, the state has no right to deprive him of his life, then there is no need for the death penalty to exist and there is no need to discuss its cost. Obviously, the problem is not that simple, because the death penalty still exists in our society and is supported by public opinion.

I am an opponent of the death penalty, but in the past, I focused on value judgment. [1] Here, I'm going to make a preliminary investigation on the cost of the death penalty from the perspective of economics, in order to provide some new perspectives for us to think about the death penalty.

First, the procedural cost of the death penalty

In those countries that still retain the death penalty, [2] there is almost no country that does not set up more complicated procedures for death penalty cases than ordinary criminal cases. The reason is that once a death penalty case is misjudged, it will cause irreparable losses. British scholar Hood once regarded the high cost of the death penalty system as one of the arguments for abolishing the death penalty in his book A Global Survey of the Death Penalty. He analyzed it this way: if the death penalty trial should give all possible guarantees to avoid misjudgment, provide the best possible legal aid, allow a series of lengthy relief such as appeal, spend a long time in the process of trial and detention, and have stricter evidence control and proof standards than ordinary criminal cases in death penalty cases, only a very small number of convicted people will be executed in the end (because in many countries, the death penalty does not necessarily mean execution, and they can survive through pardon and other procedures). [3] Indeed, in some western countries that still retain the death penalty, in order to ensure the quality of death penalty cases, the price they spend is almost amazing. Take the United States as an example, in order to prevent manslaughter, many relief procedures have been set up for death penalty cases, so that prisoners on death row will not be executed for a long time. In 2004, 59 prisoners executed in the United States spent an average of 1 1 year in prison. According to statistics, a prisoner on death row in Florida spends $24 million from being sentenced to death to being executed, while a prisoner on death row in Texas spends an average of $2.3 million a year, which is equivalent to the cost of holding three ordinary prisoners for 40 years. [4] In fact, the high cost related to the death penalty is one of the reasons why some members of the Illinois Governor's Death Penalty Committee supported the abolition of the death penalty in a report in 2002. [5] It can be seen that under such a cautious institutional arrangement, the death penalty is far more than a bullet, far from being a penalty with the lowest cost, but it is definitely the highest cost. Lake, an American scholar, once analyzed the cost of the death penalty system in the United States from three aspects: First, the trial procedure is expensive, because the death penalty case must be tried by a jury, and compared with ordinary cases, the trial is more complicated and takes longer. Second, the cost of appeal procedure is high, because there are many trials and retrial times in death penalty cases. [6] Third, the correction procedure is expensive, because the death penalty makes the prison system highly nervous, and special security precautions are needed before execution, which makes some state prisons designed as "death row", and the resulting cost is actually greater than the cost of keeping criminals in prison for life. Therefore, he pointed out: "Today, considering all costs-including financial consumption and the consumption of our courts and prisons, the criminal justice system with the death penalty is obviously more expensive than the criminal justice system without the death penalty ... The problem is not only that the cost of life imprisonment for a specific person is lower than the cost of executing the death penalty, but also that if the judicial and corrective procedures do not bear the death penalty, the cost will be lower." [7] On the other hand, in China, the litigation cost of death penalty cases is still relatively low. However, with the second trial of death penalty cases, the implementation of all audio and video recordings of death penalty cases, the return of the right of death penalty review to the Supreme People's Court, and the strengthening of legal aid for death penalty cases, the cost of death penalty cases will gradually increase. Taking the trial of death penalty cases in the second instance as an example, it is a big problem for the defendant to be detained in city and county detention centers, especially in remote areas with inconvenient transportation. And compared with the original written test, the workload will be doubled. Therefore, at the end of last year, the Supreme People's Court issued the "Notice on Further Doing a Good Job in the Trial of Death Penalty Cases of Second Instance", which clearly required: "Under the leadership of local party committees, all high courts should actively strive for the support of the government and relevant departments to effectively solve the personal and property protection and related issues involved in the trial of death penalty cases of second instance." According to reports, in order to carry out the second trial of death penalty cases, as of May this year, the Higher People's Court of Shanxi Province has added 46 judges and bailiffs, and selected 10 outstanding judges with rich trial experience from various business courts to be transferred to the Criminal Court I, which is responsible for the second trial of death penalty cases, and has conducted strict study and training for all criminal judges; The Higher People's Court of Hunan Province added 18 to the first and second criminal courts, and adjusted to increase the collegiate bench. Thanks to the efforts of the Shandong Higher People's Court, the Provincial Personnel Department and the Organizational Establishment Committee have agreed to add 30 criminal courts to the Shandong Higher People's Court. Sichuan Higher People's Court also selected 10 outstanding criminal trial judges from grass-roots and intermediate courts to handle the second trial of death penalty cases, and specially equipped criminal trial personnel with laptops and bought six new official vehicles for criminal trial courts to facilitate business trips. In order to win funds, the provincial court made a special report to the provincial party Committee and government. [8] Take the Supreme People's Court as an example. It is reported that in order to cooperate with this work, with the support of the central preparation department, three new criminal courts have been established in the Supreme People's Court, and the original two criminal courts have been added, bringing the number of criminal courts to five. At the same time, the Supreme People's Court is also looking for judges from local courts, experts and lawyers on a large scale, and plans to add hundreds of judges. You can imagine what kind of expenses this will be. [9]

Moreover, with China's accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and increasing concern about human rights in death penalty cases, the cost of death penalty cases will further increase in the future. For example, according to the requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, countries that still retain the death penalty must ensure that every condemned person has the right to request pardon, so the procedure of death penalty cases will be more complicated and take longer; For another example, many people now advocate that the proof standard of death penalty cases is higher than that of ordinary criminal cases, especially scientific evidence such as DNA, which undoubtedly requires more manpower and material resources. Therefore, some scholars in our country point out that when the cost of death penalty becomes unbearable in our society, the abolition of death penalty is no longer far away. [ 10]

Second, the execution cost of the death penalty.

The execution of the death penalty also requires a high cost. It is estimated that in the United States, the cost of executing the death penalty in some States is between $2 million and $3 million. "The expansion of the death penalty coincides with the tightening of the crime prevention budget." [1 1] Although it is unknown whether the $2-3 million here only refers to the execution of the death penalty or includes other links, according to the author's impression, the execution of a death penalty in the United States is indeed a matter that alarms the whole country and costs a lot. Take the execution of McVeigh, the principal of the Oklahoma bombings in the United States as an example: the "execution document" prepared by the judge is 56 pages long, and the terms of the document are nuanced to every detail about the execution. During the execution, a few survivors, journalists and relatives of the victims will be arranged to watch the whole process through the window in the next room, and more survivors and relatives of the victims will be arranged to watch the live broadcast of their execution in another undisclosed location. In order to cope with all kinds of protests that may occur during the execution of the death penalty, the police have to train more than 100 local police, because "the number of people on the scene during the execution of the death penalty may exceed the record of the largest crowd gathering in the history of this city, so the police are fully prepared." At the same time, the major media in the United States have paid great attention to this incident because it is "a major event in the life of the American people." "This may lead to a more heated debate on the death penalty than we originally thought, and may lead to more resentment and unfavorable discussion about the death penalty that we have been carrying out." [ 12]

In China, the death penalty used to be executed by shooting. On the surface, the shooting cost doesn't seem high. A bullet, a pistol and a shooter can complete the task, but this is not the case. First of all, in the past, our death sentence and execution were often combined with public trials and public trials, and it would cost a lot of money to organize public trials and public trials. Secondly, whether it is to build a special execution ground or to escort criminals to the suburbs far away from the bustling urban areas to execute the death penalty, it will cost a lot; Third, deploy alert forces, mobilize bailiffs from different places to execute (in practice, bailiffs who are shot are generally not local bailiffs), and reward bailiffs before and after punishment to reduce their pressure. , all involve a cost problem. As some scholars have pointed out: "It is generally believed that the execution time of gun punishment is short and the death is fast, and there will not be too much execution cost. However, in judicial practice, it often takes a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources to execute a shot. This is not only reflected in the preparatory work in the early stage, such as organizing personnel, posting announcements, holding a sentencing meeting, and dispatching a large number of vehicles. It is also reflected in the investment of a lot of manpower, the consumption of material and financial resources, and the handling of the aftermath. Therefore, every time a case is executed, it is executed by shooting. Although the moment of shooting is fleeting and concise, the cost of the whole execution process is very expensive. " [ 13]

1996, China passed the revised criminal procedure law, which stipulates: "The death penalty shall be executed by shooting or injection." The reason why execution by shooting and injection are stipulated as the execution mode of death penalty is because legislation is worried that some places do not have the conditions for execution by injection, such as the source and allocation of drugs and the training of injection executors. [ 14]

Because the law stipulates two ways of execution of the death penalty: shooting and injection, and the application of injection varies from place to place, people's impressions of the execution of the death penalty are unequal. For example, some people think that some corrupt officials sentenced to death are executed by injection, while ordinary criminals are mostly shot, which violates the principle of "everyone is equal before the death penalty". [15] In fact, an important reason for this situation is that the places where these corrupt officials are held are mostly high courts and intermediate courts, which are more likely to have the conditions for executing the death penalty by injection, while those ordinary criminals are mostly held in county-level detention centers and often do not have the conditions for executing the death penalty by injection. Nevertheless, I still advocate the "only way" to execute the death penalty as soon as possible, that is, to abolish shooting and apply the death penalty by injection uniformly. [ 16]

It is generally believed at home and abroad that injection is a more humane and economical way of execution than shooting. [17] is more user-friendly and should not be a problem in general. [18] But it is worth pondering whether this method is more economical in China at present. As a judge pointed out: "Although the price of lethal injection is only 300 yuan, the extended cost of lethal injection is very high." Because according to the relevant regulations of the Supreme People's Court, the drugs and disposable instruments for lethal injection must be uniformly distributed by the Supreme People's Court. At the same time, in order to ensure the safety of drugs, every time the death penalty by lethal injection is executed, the local court must separately apply to the Supreme People's Court to "send two judges to Beijing by plane to get medicine". "Take Chongqing as an example. In addition to going to 300 yuan to buy medicine, the round-trip air ticket and accommodation fee to Beijing are at least 6,000 yuan." The judge said, "For many local courts, this is not a small expense." [19] It is also known that at present, there are two main places for injection execution: fixed execution ground and execution vehicle. It will cost about 2 million yuan for an intermediate court to build a fixed execution ground. However, "it is not feasible to escort all prisoners on death row from all over the country to urban areas for execution, both in terms of safety and procedure." In this case, the execution vehicle, as a kind of "mobile execution ground", is relatively more cost-saving. However, "it costs more than 400,000 to buy a car, and the price of each injection is high, which many areas can't afford." It is reported that Nanjing Fu Wei Special Purpose Vehicle Factory, the largest manufacturer of injection execution vehicles in China, is in a sales dilemma. "We used to sell more than 100 vehicles, but now we can hardly sell them." The main reason is that the court thinks that the cost of executing the death penalty by injection is too high. Another example can also illustrate this point. Chongqing No.1 Intermediate People's Court is close to Chongqing Jinguan Group, which produces death penalty execution vehicles, but the court still has no procurement plan, "mainly considering the economy." Due to the constraints of the above factors, the overall progress of execution by injection in China is slow. [20]

Of course, such as execution ground or mobile car, after all, it is not disposable, but once put into use, it can be used for a long time. In addition, in the development, distribution and collection of drugs, there is certainly room for greatly reducing costs. Therefore, in order to promote the humanization of punishment, the state should promote the execution of lethal injection with a value-for-money attitude, and allocate funds to effectively solve the standardized construction of execution sites and the purchase of mobile execution vehicles. Although some people strongly condemn that "scientific and technological progress is used to destroy lives abandoned by social groups" [2 1], it is a helpless fact that as long as the death penalty still exists, it is not a dispensable problem to alleviate the suffering of prisoners on death row.

Third, the incidental cost of death penalty.

The costs associated with the death penalty are at least reflected in the following aspects:

The first is the treatment of death row inmates. Article 2 12 of China's criminal procedure law stipulates: "After the execution of the death penalty is completed, the people's court that handed it over for execution shall notify the criminal's family." The Supreme People's Court's Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Implementation of the Criminal Procedure Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) further specified this. It requires that after the execution of the death penalty, the people's court responsible for execution shall handle the following matters: 1. The suicide note and written record of the death penalty prisoner shall be examined in time, which involves property inheritance, debt settlement, family entrustment and other contents. Should be handed over to family members and copied for future reference; Involving clues and other issues, it shall be copied to the relevant authorities. 2, notify the criminal's family to accept the body within a time limit; If there are cremation conditions, the ashes will be notified. If it is not collected within the time limit, the people's court shall notify the relevant units to deal with it. The disposal of the corpse or ashes of the condemned person shall be recorded. 3. Foreign criminals shall notify foreign embassies and consulates in China after executing the death penalty. Specific procedures and time limits shall be handled in accordance with relevant regulations. All the above matters will cost the court a certain amount of manpower and material resources, especially in practice, some death row inmates have not come to collect their bodies or their families refuse to collect them. At this point, the disposal of the body will cost the court more energy.

When dealing with the aftermath of death row, there is another problem that has to be mentioned, that is, the use of organs of death row. Some scholars say that in practice, there are indeed cases in which the executive organ reaches an agreement with relevant medical research institutions to transplant organs to others or take corpses away for medical dissection without the consent of the executed person and his family, and the executive organ charges a certain fee to the user unit or individual for his own use. [22] In this regard, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Civil Affairs have made the Interim Provisions on the Use of Death Penalty Criminals' Bodies or Organs in 1984, which stipulates that the following kinds of death penalty criminals' corpses or organs can be used: 1, and no one collects them or their families refuse to collect them; 2. Death penalty criminals voluntarily hand over their bodies to medical and health units for use; 3. Get the consent of your family. The Interim Provisions also stipulate that, with the consent of family members, the health department may negotiate with family members and reach a written agreement on economic compensation for the release of usable corpses. There are some problems in the "Interim Provisions": First, the "Interim Provisions" only involve the use of the corpses and organs of death row inmates, not the donation of living organs. However, in practice, there have also been cases where death row inmates wish to donate living organs to patients in urgent need. Can the court agree to this? Now, there are different views in theory. Some people think that prisoners on death row, like other citizens, have the right to donate their organs voluntarily. Some people also think that except for allowing prisoners on death row to donate their organs to their spouses and close relatives, everything else must be banned. If the former idea is adopted, then another question will follow: can the condemned person who donates organs be given a mitigated punishment? Secondly, how to determine the voluntariness of the condemned prisoners? Considering the special circumstances of prisoners on death row, it is obviously necessary to further refine the rules to ensure that their decision to hand over their organs or corpses to medical and health units is voluntary, not the result of mobilization, education or even pressure from relevant institutions or personnel. Why do many people think euthanasia is reasonable, but now most countries in the world have not legalized euthanasia? An important reason is that it is not easy to operate euthanasia because it is of one's own will. Third, how can the families of condemned prisoners get financial compensation? The current "Interim Provisions" only generally stipulates that the families of death row inmates have this right, but how to implement it and how to ensure that the money will eventually fall into the pockets of the families of death row inmates still needs corresponding institutional support. Fourth, effective preventive and punitive measures should be taken to stop the act of transplanting organs or using the bodies of prisoners on death row against the wishes of the prisoners themselves and their families.

Second, the clue to solve the case was interrupted by the execution of the prisoner. In some cases of gang crimes or complicated social relations, if the key perpetrators are executed, it is equivalent to reducing the risk of other unexposed criminals. There are many examples in history: some criminals may be stubborn at that time, but in the process of serving their sentences later, or chatting with prisoners, or one day, their conscience finds that they may intentionally or unintentionally expose other cases or accomplices, providing important information for further investigation of other cases. In this sense, keeping alive can save judicial resources and reduce the cost of solving crimes. For example, when a Russian court recently tried kulayev, a terrorist in the Beslan massacre in 2004, some people demanded that he be sentenced to death, while others objected. One of the reasons is that there is still something unclear in the investigation of the incident. Let him live and thoroughly understand the truth of the incident. [23] For another example, after the corruption case of Han Guizhi, the former chairman of Heilongjiang CPPCC, there was a saying in the society: in the past, she was the minister of organization, and she had so much power that she could let anyone go; Now that she has been arrested, she has more power. Whoever is told to go down will have to go down, ie expose other corrupt officials. Therefore, it is pointed out that killing corrupt officials is not conducive to anti-corruption, because leaving him or her is tantamount to leaving clues.

The third is the state compensation caused by the wrongful death sentence. In the past, it was enough for the country to rehabilitate the wrong person, and the families of the rehabilitated people had to thank the government in turn. Now it is different. Victims of unjust, false and misjudged cases and their families can obtain state compensation according to law. According to Article 27 of the State Compensation Law, which came into effect in accordance with 1995, if death is caused by criminal justice, death compensation and funeral expenses shall be paid, the total amount of which is 20 times of the average annual salary of employees in the previous year. Living expenses shall also be paid to those who were unable to work and were supported by the deceased before his death. Assuming that the average annual salary of employees in China last year was 1 10,000 yuan, the state would have to pay at least 200,000 yuan to kill a wrong person. Of course, in reality, the long litigation between the victim and the case-handling organ around state compensation and counter-compensation, as well as the difficult situation that the judgment is not enforced, have further increased the costs of both parties.

The fourth is the loss of labor caused by the death penalty. Man is the most active factor in productivity. Even criminals can still do some work in prison to create certain benefits for society. Some criminals even made scientific inventions in prison and wrote masterpieces handed down from generation to generation. In addition, the vast majority of non-capital prisoners have the opportunity to return to society. Only a few of these returnees really commit crimes again, and most of them can become people who are beneficial to society, communities and relatives. However, the death penalty will push people to destruction. Although some people may think that the death penalty can solve criminals who may endanger society again once and for all, as previously analyzed, this "gain" should be far less than "loss". Of course, the discussion here also has a certain relationship with the population base of a society. If there is too much social labor force, it will cause the labor force to depreciate, and accordingly it is easy to ignore the fact that the death penalty causes the loss of labor force; However, if the labor force in a society is insufficient or even extremely scarce, the losses caused by the death penalty in this respect will be more easily concerned. For example, in the population explosion era of Britain18th century, due to the rising crime rate and the shortage of labor force, there were more than 200 kinds of death penalty crimes on the list, and the gallows creaked under the heavy pressure. But later, due to the extreme shortage of labor in American colonies, the court reduced some death sentences to "exile" and made those exiles contract slaves. "Those slaves who can persist until the end of their sentences usually get land and a chance to start over. Many former exiles have succeeded and become respected citizens. " [24]