The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase.
The result is a per-inmate cost that is the nation’s highest — and $2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard. Full Article
good this is what the country gets for focusing on retribution and cruel and unusual punishment that takes place in our jails and prisons where prisoners really run the places and demand strict criminal and physical training and completely segregate under ruthless leaders while the guards look the other way. Then the guards look the other way and let em tatoo up all over their faces necks and everywhere else with gang crap then send out into the communities with absolutely nothing to help them reintegrate in society and actually do everything they can to thwart rehabilitation. collective karma…75000 shit thats almost double the salaries of most Americans I could live good off 40000 grand …
And we wonder why judges and advocates hate mandatory minimums? For all our chest-beating of how wonderfully progressive America when it comes to, well, everything, we sure as hell are actually terrible at just about everything. Our laws are constantly being driven by emotion (the public) and self-serving politicians who’d rather win the election than observe actual empirical evidence. It’s why we have the highest prison population in the world, the RSO registry, favor companies making billions in profits at literally the cost of peoples lives (healthcare), the biggest polluter per capita, and an insane amount of poverty for a nation with GDP that’s almost as much as the rest of the world combined. America, as a country, does not give a crap about its people.
Might as well send them to college.
JB and his union thugs got California taxpayers in a choke hold with their hands cuffed to a fence post and I do not see any rescue.
I have to wonder about the statement in the article that says the prison population is declining. I suspect someone is playing with the numbers. I also believe the prison unions love this. Working under that union is a very lucrative job. This is old news. Apparently the inmate numbers are going down, but the costs keep rising. What a scam.
“Their numbers go up, not down. There is no way that could be justified,” state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber). “It was a deceit and a fraud to everybody that we were going to save money in corrections. We have not.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-prison-budget-insight-idUSKBN0UK0J520160106
I will make the state a deal. If they will pay me just $50,000 a year I promise not to commit any violent felonies for the next 20 years to life.
That will save the state over $25,000 a year. Sounds like a bargain to me
This is terrible! The funds certainly don’t go towards rehabilitation/prison guards/overtime etc.
So, the passage of HR1761 means that it would cost over 1 million dollars to hold the person for 15 years? I just think the money could be used more effectively!
Saying it costs $75,000 per year to house a prisoner leaves the general public thinking that prisoners are acutally “receiving” $75,000 per year’s worth of services. Simply not true.
One look at the children’s size portions of poor quality food that prisoners receive is an indication that the state or federal money prisons get certainly doesn’t trickle down to the inmates. Many prisons are in disrepair with crumbling infrastructures. Prisoners wait “years” for an eye exam when their eyesight is failing. Prisoners have prison jobs that pay them less, much, much less than minimum wage.
Comparing the Cost for one year of housing a prisoner to one year of a Harvard education is nuts, it’s like apples and oranges. After a year at Harvard, one has something, part of an education. After one year in prison, one loses something, themselves.