Cost Of Prisons

Costs of Corrections in the United States

Did you know that 23 states prison systems are operating at over 100% capacity? "The increases in drug imprisonment, the decrease in releases from prison, and the re-incarceration for technical parole violations are leading to significant overcrowding and contribute to the growing costs of prisons. Prisons are stretched beyond capacity, creating dangerous and unconstitutional conditions which often result in costly lawsuits. In 2006, 40 out of 50 states were at 90 percent capacity or more, with 23 of those states operating at over 100 percent capacity." (Justice Policy Institute, "Pruning Prisons: How Cutting Corrections Can Save Money and Protect Public Safety," May 2009, via the DrugWarFacts.org
How come state inmate populations are increasing? Here are some major states and there problems. California is by far the most publicized, but certainly not the only state having challenging problems paying for its correctional system. As with most state correctional systems, the California system is overcrowded with no real operational plan to resolve its overcrowding and other operational problems. Building new prisons is out of the question. The nation’s correctional systems have for the past two plus decades seen a continuous flow of prisoners going in and nothing more than a stream of prisoners coming out. One must also mention the unbelievable recidivism rate of 70%. The “3 Strikes and You Are Out Law”, “Rockefeller Drug Laws”, mandated sentencing, and numerous other laws that were once believed to be tough on crime, I believe, are major contributing factors to the overcrowding of American prisons, and further increasing the operational
States are taking a hard look at a variety of strategies for decreasing inmate populations, hopefully without sacrificing public safety. For example, California has sought to reduce the number of low-risk parolees being returned to prison for technical violations of their parole by using intermediate sanctions rather than being sent back to prison. By doing this California has decreased its overpopulated prisons by several thousand. Further lowering the costs associated with it. Many states are adopting improved probation programs based on Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program. Created in 2004, HOPE reformed California’s State’s policy so that probation violations resulted in immediate but small consequences, such as two days in jail. "Before this, offenders had to commit many infractions before facing consequences," according to the National Governors Association Best Practices Center, "but the consequences were expensive and often disproportionate to the