Say Anything Blog

Summary:

It looks like the tough on crime crowd is breaking the bank with their lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key philosophy. According to a new report released by the Pew Center on the States, a staggering sum of $49 billion was spent on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, and in Four states — Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut — they now spend more on corrections than they do on higher education. One of every 100 adults is in jail or prison in the U.S., and 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008.

“Getting tough on criminals has gotten tough on taxpayers,” said Pew’s project director Adam Geld. Many states like Kansas and Texas have made changes in their correction policies to save money. They are making greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than reimprisonment for offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules.

The report also revealed alarming statistics on incarceration by race and gender: “While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine.” The racial disparity for women also is stark. One of every 355 white women aged 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one of every 100 black women in that age group.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-prison-population,1,2119528.story
Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison—chicagotribune.com