On Monday, June 7, the Pennsylvania State Government Management and Cost Study Commission will hear from experts on pro­pos­als to cut the costs of var­i­ous gov­ern­ment pro­grams. The Commission, estab­lished in 2009, is com­prised of pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor cost-mind­ed lead­ers in Pennsylvania and has been charged with study­ing the man­age­ment of gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for cost-cut­ting mea­sures. Among the experts who will tes­ti­fy at the hear­ing is Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, who will pro­vide infor­ma­tion on the high costs of the death penal­ty. His tes­ti­mo­ny states: “[T]he death penal­ty is not an essen­tial gov­ern­ment func­tion and, in fact, is prob­a­bly one of the least effec­tive and most cost­ly pro­grams, when mea­sured in terms of the peo­ple it affects. What Pennsylvania calls the death penal­ty is in real­i­ty a very expen­sive form of life with­out parole. Despite hav­ing the fourth largest death row in the coun­try, Pennsylvania has not had an exe­cu­tion in 11 years” and no ​“con­test­ed exe­cu­tion since 1962.” Read full text of Richard Dieter’s tes­ti­mo­ny below.

Posted June 7, 2010. Click here for full text of Richard Dieter’s tes­ti­mo­ny. Read DPIC’s report, ​“Smart on Crime: Rethinking the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis.” See also Costs or read oth­er Testimony on the death penalty.

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