The cost of the American prison system is at an all-time high. The reason for this is because the prison systems are too overcrowded. The social problem with the prison system is that when criminals are in prison, they network into career criminals. When they get released into society, the only tool the criminals have is crime. This situation is very sad. The prison systems of America need to concentrate on creating more job opportunities for these incarcerated individuals rather than have the inmates go into prison as convicts and get released into society as career criminals. Inmates are coming out of prisons worse than when they go in. If nothing changes, inmates will just keep returning to prisons in an endless cycle of capture and release. More and more inmates will make prisons their home.
For the states which employ the death penalty, this luxury comes at a high price. In Texas, a death penalty case costs taxpayers an “average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. In Florida, each execution is costing the state $3.2 million” (Warren, Jenifer). In financially strapped California, one report estimated that the state could save, “$90 million each year by abolishing capital punishment. The New York Department of Correctional Services estimated that implementing the death penalty would cost the state about $118 million annually” (Warren, Jenifer).
If inmates keep going back to prison, the cost will destroy the American economy. “Prison operations consumed about 77% of State correctional costs in 2001” (Myser, Michael). The remaining 23% was spent on juvenile justice, probation and parole, community-based corrections, and central office administration. State prison systems spend more than “$30 billion annually, and the Bureau of Prisons budgeted $5 billion for just 182,000 federal inmates this year” (Myser, Michael). That translates into plenty of work for companies looking to crack the prison market. “During the last 25 years prison and jail populations have grown 274 percent to 2.3 million in 2008, according to the Pew research, while those under supervision grew 226 percent over the same span to 5.1 million” (Warren, Jenifer). It estimated that states spent a record “$51.7 billion on corrections in fiscal year 2008 and incarcerating one inmate cost them, on average, $29,000 a year” (Warren, Jenifer).
The cost of an inmate is about $20,000 to $50,000 a year depending on if they are on death row or not. Thirty Thousand dollars a year is unnecessary spending. Most Americans work hard for their money. These inmates cause crime which goes against society’s economic health. So much money is being spent just toward keeping people incarcerated. People have to realize that we, as citizens, don’t need to pay $30,000 a year to keep criminals behind bars. If the American people cut in half the federal inmates' cost it would save the United States $2.5 billion.
I understand that we as a society need to lock criminals up, but do we really need to make their incarceration so costly. I know there are some aspects of prison life that cannot be cut, such as security; but in California the inmates eat full course meals and get milk. Some prisons even have HD televisions so the prisoners can be entertained. In Texas they give the inmates a biscuit filled with all the nutrients the human body needs and I think that they should implement those austere measures in California as well.
Work cited
Warren, Jenifer. High Cost of Prisons Not Paying Off, Report Finds. June 8, 2006: Los Angeles Times, 12 March 2011. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0608-05.htm
Myser, Michael. The Hard Sell. March 15 2007: Business 2.0 Magazine: 12 March 20 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/12/01/8394995/indn x.htm
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