The cost of imprisoning inmates in California is expected to reach a record high of $75,560/annually this year. At that price, a student could be sent to Harvard University and still have a little money leftover. California currently has the highest per-inmate cost in the nation (which is a 13% increase since just 2015).
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For the fiscal year beginning July 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown’s spending plan included a record $11.4 billion for the department of corrections. However, that plan predicted 11,500 fewer inmates over the course of four years. So, if fewer people were expected to be incarcerated, why is it still so expensive? Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers. For instance, in 1994, the corrections department had one employee for roughly every four inmates. That number is now one employee for every two inmates.
“California was sued over prison overcrowding, and to comply with a federal court-imposed population cap, the Brown administration now keeps most lower-level offenders in county jails instead of state prisons. Additionally, voters in 2014 reduced penalties for drug and property crimes and last fall approved the earlier releases.”1
But don’t expect that number to go down at all. Joan Petersilia, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, said, “We released all the low-risk, kind of low-need, and we kept in the high-risk, high-need.” And that will keep costs high.
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Did you watch the video above? Do you ever feel like our local, state and federal government just responds to problems with a money band-aid, rather than spend the money to invest in prevention?
