Bukan Bukan Siapa Siapa: Death Penalty Justification in a Capitalistic System: Do’s & Don’ts

By: Ruben Abdulrachman

This is an essay analyzing about the prison systems taking place in capitalistic countries and how death penalty is still applied in some of them, by using Karl Marx and Michel Foucault’s arguments. My arguments will be based on Karl Marx and Michel Foucault to justify why prisons are the way they are in the current world. It will then lead to the analysis of death penalty and how death penalty is supposed to be conducted.

At first, we will talk about Emile Durkheim and how he linked that prisons’ systems are very much related to the progress in society. He thought that at first society was feudal, primitive, and therefore a more well-known term of his, ‘mechanical’ society took place.^[1] Small numbers of individuals lived in this kind of societies and they were living based on similiarities and also had an extremely punitive pshycological disposition. Any criminal regardless of their crime was to be punished by the guards in a painful, humiliating punishment of which the purpose is to demoralize crime and to take away one’s dignity. Durkheim was supporting the role of punishment to the extend that it reinforces the wider constructions of morality and social cohesion. Punishments were extremely severe and offenders were executed in the most awful ways imaginable.

He thought that with the advancement in science & tehnology, society also progresses and this leads to the other type of society which are the ‘organic’ societies. These societies are heterogeneous, featuring a specialization of tasks and recognition of diversity and mutual interdependence. In a more secure society, punishments become less severe. The current system of prisons is controlled by a certain set of law and regulations that are different from country to country. These punishments are unavoidable and everyone is of equal rights under the law. Most societies in our current world are of ‘organic’ societies since law is practiced everywhere in the world; be it international laws, national laws, or laws reached by democracy or based on religions.

By Marx’s argument also, in a capitalistic society, law and punishment stands. This however, comes with their own special approach. The role of profit and money has to exist in order for one rule to stay and thrive. Some capitalistic countries for example, might be very explicit in showing that prisons are a money source by making the prisoners work as inmate labors. Although they are protected by the Geneva Convention, a World Rights organization that states that prisoners may not do work against their will, still, the tendency that prisons ask their prisoners to work is of capitalistic motives. The types of punishments that the prisoners experience are also the less severe ones, as Marx would argue, that these punishments are the ones that don’t spend a lot of money to conduct. These prisons focus more on the profits that these inmate labors can make: rather then the increase in their punishments’ severity; or any human rights’ reasoning in mind.

There are also capitalistic countries however, that don’t apply this system to their prisoners (inmate labors). This then can be explained by the French philosopher Michel Foucault ^[2]. Foucault argued that prisoners are only making better criminals. He says that in prison, a small of group of the most frequent victims of most everyday crimes can be controlled, kept under surveillance, and thoroughly known. This will lead to the betterment of technique for these criminals. All of them will sum up the economic profit in the realm of prostitution, drug-trafficking, etc. There will also be the political profit in the fact that if there are more criminals, there will also be higher acceptance towards police controls.

By using these two people’s arguments, we can clearly see how prisons can stay and thrive in any capitalistic society. Either making their prisoners work or not, the amount of profits that they give is reason enough to create more and more prisons. Not to mention, privatizing prisons is a big thing in the US. The GEO Group, a private company that has facilities for maximum, medium and minimum security prisons claimed $115 million in profits on $1.52 billion in revenue in 2013.^[3] We can really see that it is a real big business, although it is only one part of the story talking about the capitalization of prisons. The other part to it is that the number of criminals is also increasing every second and the data shows that within three years of release from prison, 70% of all prisoners return. We can imagine prisons being restaurants that have a 70% return rate from its customers. These customers are not only giving profits inside the restaurant, instead they also make economical profits both inside and outside the restaurants according to the integration of Marx and Foucault’s arguments.

There is actually another big thing that has to be taken into consideration if we are putting this topic to the table. It is the role of mafia in the capitalistic society. Since talking about mafia will be of a whole different essay, we would not deeply analyze the significant role of mafia in some countries. In some capitalistic countries, mafia is the one taking responsibilities in areas such as drug-trafficking and prostitution. It is of public secret that mafia coexists in the capitalistic society. By intuition alone, we know that prostitution and drug-trafficking are huge businesses. And the mafia is making a lot of money out of these. Prostitution and drug-trafficking businesses that don’t want to / can’t give a significant amount of money to the mafia will then be taken to the police. It is as though the mafia is working as a shield from the police. If these businesses fail to give a significant amount of money, to prisons they go. This circle of businesses in the capitalistic society is an unsolvable trouble, yet we are so used to it that it is widely acceptable in every capitalistic citizen’s minds.

Going through a deeper analysis on prisons, we then will ask how the death penalty can stay and thrive in a capitalistic society. It is true though, that there is no need for the government to care about human rights in a capitalistic society. We can also see however, that it has little economic benefits that can be taken into account, at least in the surface. The criminals executed will not be more-skilled criminals and they will also not be able to make others be one, as they would be already executed. This however, is not the only perspective that death penalty can bring to the capitalistic scaling machine.

There are several factors that can make the death penalty economically beneficial. The first potential benefit is reduced crowding. This is quantified by calculating the amount of incarceration costs that would be spent had not the sentenced criminal been executed. A research study has been done in the US for this matter. In the study, only 1.2% of the 2,575 convicted criminals in 1992 were actually executed. Taking the annual incarceration costs to be $17,957 and the life expectancy of a prisoner is 40 years in prison, the total costs of reduced crowding would be $12,452,130 when discounted at 3% over 40 years ($415,071 per inmate)^[4]^. This benefit however, has to also be carefully considered together with the fact that there are costs such as forgone output that criminals other than inmates on a death row could have given such as work that will produce a significant amount of money. [*capital inmates are not allowed to work due to safety reasons.]

The second potential benefit is nonuse values. These values are those made by a third party; not by the two parties which are the government and the prisoners. The third party in this case is to be represented by the proponents of death penalty. The people who are supporting the death penalty will help the death penalty to thrive by giving money for the advancement of the system. In the United States, 80% of the 250,000,000 citizens of the US are death penalty proponents, and if each person is to pay $1, the money collected will amount to $200,000,000. Although we don’t go around seeing people giving money for the death penalty to thrive, this economical profit has to be taken into consideration due to its significant potential and the striving ideology of democracy. We also then need to account for the opponents of death penalty. 20% of the 250,000,000 US citizens will give $50,000,000 if each person is to pay $1. The economical profit is calculated at $150,000,000. It is very true that this value differs according to the ratio of the proponents and opponents of death penalty and also the human population in a country. Regarding to this fact, the death penalty can then be concluded to be beneficial in a country and not in another.

The third potential benefit that death penalty can bring is detterence. It is though, undeniably hard to quantify the dettered effect of death penalty. I hardly found any research that concludes that death penalty’s detterence rate is significant enough to keep death penalty as a punishment. Some studies even show that there is no relationship between the conduct of death penalty and the murder rates in any particular region. Considering it only from the relationship between the death penalty and the murder rate however, is a narrow perspective. We can also analyze the benefit in terms of prevention of future potential disadvantage. If a series killer by the rate of 1 murder in 1 year is to be executed, then the future victims that are to be killed within the killer’s life expectancy after the killer is arrested, should be counted as a saved loss; therefore profit in economy. We can also take average of the future victims’ wages/incomes and multiply them by the number of predicted future victims. Although this problem can be solved just to give the murderer a life sentence, the death penalty also gets rid of the problem and therefore the economical profit should be calculated similarly. For significant purposes we should get rid of mass and spree killers, while only taking into account serial killers which are the most constant. The average age of the general serial killers in the US is 28.73 (29) ^[5], while the average time between sentencing and execution is 190 months (16 years) ^[6]. These facts give information that the death row inmates are on average to be executed at 45 years of age. Taking the life expectancy to be 74 ^[7], the average number of lifes that is saved is at 29 (rate of 1 murder per year). We can then multiply this number with the mean income in the US which is $44,888 ^[8]. The value adds up to $1,301,752 saved loss (profit) for every capital inmate put to life sentence / death penalty. The value multiplies for every serial killer caught and executed.

We have learned that death penalty can be very beneficial for a capitalistic country as for three reasons: reduced crowding, nonuse values, and also detterence rate.

Just to also limit the death penalty only to murders/killings as a violation in law however, there is a fallacy. For other major violations such as drug-trafficking, it still remains a highly blurry topic due to the hardness of relating the death penalty to the detterence (reduced drug users / drugs-related deaths) that it actually gives. An acceptable scientific research data is needed to calculate the detterence effect of death penalty of any violation: murder, drug-trafficking, political offense or any major violation.

In a current world that we live in, any country has the freedom to make its own laws & regulations due its sovereignity as a nation added also by the undeniable victory of liberal democracy as the triumphing ideology. Since death penalty is not supported by any human rights movement, the only way to make death penalty an acceptable punishment is either a religious or a capitalistic one. The religous approach however, will not be considered in this essay due to simplicity purposes. The combination of these three factors: reduced crowding, nonuse values, and deterrence effect should be the primary factors to be considered in order to decide whether or not death penalty is acceptable to be conducted in a country. Having not calculated these three factors transparently, a country violates the rule of capitalistic ideology; in other words, bad business.

Interestingly enough in Indonesia from 2013-2015, 16 out of 19 death penalty executions were caused by drug-trafficking, the rest being for murders. The current president stated that he would not give any future clemencies for violations in drug trafficking as the data states that 40-50 people die each day from drug-related reasons (18,000 people a year). Now, he said, Indonesia is facing what he calls as a ‘drug crisis’. This motive is a definite capitalistic motive as the reasoning behind the ‘no clemency’ policy is to save lives in the future, to save loss economic benefits that Indonesia potentially gets in the future, therefore to make profit in economy. Needless to say, a ‘crisis’, in this sense, has a literal economic meaning after all. This however, is acceptable only if the data obtained has a scientific approach at the very least, which is clearly analyzed to have been faulty. [9]

In conclusion, in order for a country to conduct a death penalty or make any kind of law or regulation that punishes its citizens, the only two possible options to base it on are capitalistic calculation (that is, the profit and loss calculation) and also not to forget, the religious motives. Emile Durkheim thinks that the current society that we live in today is of ‘organic’ societies. In consequence, the punishments that are conducted to its citizens should be the less severe ones. I think that no punishment is more severe in the current society than to be executed from the conclusion of a set of false data, or even without getting to know the actual reason why a person had to be put to prison in the first place. The reason could be as controversial as Michel Foucault who was once interviewed to say that prisons exist just to make higher-skilled criminals in a similar fashion such as schools and hospitals, or the reason could be as simple as Karl Marx that suggests that prisons have to be economically beneficial to be put in the law of a capitalistic country (by making prisoners work, etc). If then death penalty is conducted in a country without any transparent, scientific capitalistic reasoning or religious motives behind it, then a country is said to go back to what Durkheim had said to be ‘mechanical’ societies.