Final installment, trifecta of prison related threads.

[rn79870]

The cost of keeping a person in prison. 2008.

As far as I'm concerned, we have too few prisons. However, with CA spending almost $50,000 per year per inmate, I wonder if we couldn't trim a little fat off the budget.

The $49,000 QuestionCalifornia spends around $49,000 annually per adult inmate, nearly 4 times Mississippi, which spends $13,300. Where does the money go? A partial breakdown:

Security $20,429 Medical services $7,669 Parole operations $4,436 Facility operations $3,938 Administration $2,871 Psychiatric services $1,403 Food $1,377 Education $687 Records $513 Vocational education $289 Inmate welfare fund $282 Clothing $152 Religion $53 Activities $23 Library $23 Transportation $15 Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics; California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; National Association of State Budget Officers It's interesting that they spend more on psychiatric services each year per inmate than on food. Spending $1,377 per year, per inmate for food comes down to $114.75 a month, @ 3 meals per day, that's $1.26 cents per meal. Interesting that they spend $56 per day for security for each inmate too.

With Mississippi spending about 1/4 what CA spends, maybe CA needs to take a good look at it's prison system.

[skylndrftr]

Im curious as to how they came up with those numbers...

I am assuming that the security number includes capital costs for new prisons, the simpel response to that would be put less people in jail for things like posession of marijuana.

Other note, they spend almost twice as much on record keeping as education. No wonder there is a such a high recidivism rate.