Even if you are willing to execute a lot of innocent people, I do not think there is a practical implementation of this policy that substantially decreases the expense and harm of incarceration, unless you also change the system where almost nothing goes to trial and the main purpose of the actual on-the-record sentence for a crime is for the prosecutor to use to intimidate the defendant into settling. As long as that’s still in place, most of the effect this would have would be more people (guilty and innocent alike) pleading guilty to avoid the death penalty, more people in prison, and more executions but not by enough to offset the previous thing.
I really do not think you have thought this through or done any reading about criminal justice reform options. It feels like you decided that the reason everyone considers this a terrible idea is that they’re ‘too soft’ and you have not engaged at all with the actual history of criminal justice reforms or the reality of the incarceration situation. That might be a limitation of anonymous asks as a medium, and also relatedly I am really sick of anon asks on the subject of ‘what if instead of criminal justice reform we killed most of the prisoners’, so I really encourage you to get a blog with which to debate this issue and correct my misapprehension that you have given this policy zero thought.
“I’m willing to accept that there will be some innocent people executed… I think you are the one evil for making us waste all that
resources”