Prisons - Prison Dollars

"…this most recent prison experiment … has generated a corrections boom which is extraordinary even by U.S. standards and has led to the construction of the largest prison system in human history aimed at controlling crime." — Patrick C. McCormick

At the end of 2001, 1,962,220 people (one out of every 142 residents) were in America's jails and prison. With about 5% of the world's population, America houses about one-quarter of the world's prisoners, according to McCormick, who contends that between 1980 and 2000, about 1,000 new jails/prisons were built to accommodate the growing number of incarcerated. If the prisoner population keeps growing, he writes, about one new, 1,000-bed facility per week will have to be added to the system through 2010. McCormick and other analysts cite annual costs of $25,000 to $70,000 to house each adult prisoner and $100,000 to construct each new cell.

The chart shows that expenditures on the corrections system grew 458% between 1982 and 1999, from $9.5 billion to $53 billion, with state governments picking up the lion's share; it came to $34.6 billion (64%) in 1999. Local governments picked up 28% and the federal government contributed 8%. As part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the federal government increased appropriations to state and local governments in return for imposing longer sentences for violent crimes or requiring criminals to serve at least 85% of their sentences before parole (the violent offender incarceration and truth-in-sentencing incentive grant [VOITIS] program).

In 1999, the year state governments spent $34.6 billion on corrections, they spent $36 billion on highways, $22 billion on health, and $20 billion on higher education. Are they getting their money's worth? The chart shows a decline in the 1990s in robberies, burglaries, and larcenies/thefts reported to law enforcement agencies. According to a 1998 report from the National Center for Policy Analysis, crime goes down when crime becomes costly to perpetrators; that is, when their likelihood of going to prison increases. The report cites numerous studies to support the contention that while the cost of building and maintaining prisons is high, "the cost of not doing so appears to be higher." When a crook is in jail, the theory goes, even if it costs $25,000 to maintain him, a dozen or more nondrug crimes are not being committed, saving society upwards of $53,900 a year. The report does note: "Prisons, however, do not pay for themselves with many drug offenders, who have grown to 30 percent of new state prisoners, up from 7 percent in 1980. There is no social benefit for incarcerating drug dealers … because they are readily replaced in the drug marketplace. Hence, the researchers calculate that prisons cannot pass a cost-benefit test for about one in four prisoners." Mark Cohen, economics professor at Vanderbilt University, told The New York Times that longer prison terms, the modern solution to crime, would be economical in terms of reducing rape, assault, and automobile theft, but they would not be economical when it comes to burglars and larcenists.

Might prevention be more cost-effective? Peter Greenwood examined four programs for the Rand Corporation: Head Start, parent training, and two program aimed at high-risk juveniles. He reported that these programs "would be twice or three times as cost effective as just putting people in prison."

These days, it seems, we hear more about profit than prevention. We look at for-profit prisons next.

Sources: Chart: Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Justice Expenditure and Employment in the United States, 1999," February 2002, NCJ 191746, Table 2, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/jeeus99.pdf, and FBI, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2001, Table 1. Patrick T. McCormick, "Just Punishment and America's Prison Experiment," Theological Studies 61 (2000), p508+. National Center for Policy Analysis, "Crime and Punishment in America: 1998," NCPA Policy Report No. 219, September 1998, http://www.ncpa.org/~ncpa/studies/s219.html. Butterfield, Fox, "Prison: Where the Money Is," The New York Times, June 2, 1996, pE16.