HUNGER GAMES. Survivor gets to rot in jail, but with decent food, BUT no means of entertainment apart from books.
Not sure how it works in the US, but the argument about the cost of keeping convicted criminals in prison vs the death penalty - I read a story in the British papers this week about a prisoner sentenced to death in the 1980's who is still in prison now awaiting the act. This may be an extreme length of time, but I would assume there is a period before the sentence of death is performed, so either way you pay for a penal penalty and the death itself. You could always try and do what the British did in the late 18th and 19th century - we shipped a lot of our criminals to Australia. Is there another country you could palm them off to like we did?
What you're saying is: let's clean our hands and place the ball on someone else's court! Let them handle our problems!