At $75,560, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

Prison is WAY easier to get into than Harvard however.

There is big time money in the incarceration business. Many people (certainly not all) are paid very well to run our country’s prisons and jails. Particularly in California.

Now ask yourself. Would you want to end the unjust drug war if it meant losing your 6 figure job?

(From The LA Times)

The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase.

The result is a per-inmate cost that is the nation’s highest — and $2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard.

Since 2015, California’s per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10,000, or about 13%. New York is a distant second in overall costs at about $69,000.

Critics say with fewer inmates, the costs should be falling.

“Now that we’re incarcerating less, we haven’t ramped the system back down,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the left-leaning California Budget & Policy Center.

For example, the corrections department has one employee for every two inmates, compared with one employee for roughly every four inmates in 1994.

Click here for the article.

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/