Housing Prisoners in California Now More Expensive than Sending Them to Harvard

Anna Hunt, Staff Writer
Waking Times

The LA Times recently reported that the cost of housing each inmate in the California prison system will cost $75,560 per year. This is 20 percent higher than the cost of attending Harvard College, based on Harvard estimates for room, board and tuition.

Cost of Housing Prisoners Doubled Since 2005

Interestingly, housing prisoners in California is now twice as expensive as it was in 2005. The cost surged in 2015, increasing nearly $10,000 or 13 percent from the prior year. The biggest cost drivers are prison staff salaries. For example, today, the California corrections department employs about one person per two inmates. In 1994, this ratio was one employee to four inmates.

Governor Jerry Brown allocated an $11.4 billion budget towards the California’s corrections department. The budget goes into effect on July 1, 2017. Although the cost of housing prisoners is higher than ever before, experts project 11,500 fewer inmates within four years. Chris Hoene, executive director of the left-leaning California Budget & Policy Center, stated:

“Now that we’re incarcerating less, we haven’t ramped the system back down.”

Joan Petersilia, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, added:

“We released all the low-risk, kind of low-need, and we kept in the high-risk, high-need.”

Incarcerations in the U.S.

In many states, low-level offenders are kept in county jails so state jails adhere to federal prison population caps. Yet, state prisons continue to remain full due to federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. States first implemented these guidelines in the 1980s. Since then, the U.S. prison population exploded. The image below shows some interesting trends for incarcerations in the U.S.

What do you think? Is the system focused on fair and just detention of criminals, or are we just feeding the prison industrial complex?

About the Author

Anna Hunt is co-owner of OffgridOutpost.com, an online store offering GMO-free healthy storable food and emergency kits. She is also the staff writer for WakingTimes.com. Anna is a certified Hatha yoga instructor and founder of Atenas Yoga Center. She enjoys raising her children and being a voice for optimal human health and wellness. Visit her essential oils store here. Visit Offgrid Outpost on Facebook.

Sources sited within the article.

This article (Housing Prisoners in California Now More Expensive than Sending Them to Harvard) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Anna Hunt and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.

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