The spiraling costs of incarcerating prisoners

Pew estimates that the direct cost of this surge in state imprisonment now exceeds $50-billion per year, eating up in every 15 general fund dollars.

The inmate population in the U.S. represents the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

In 2008, the number of inmates in America was slightly larger than the populations of Atlanta, Boston, Kansas City and Seattle combined. Or to put it another way, the U.S. houses more inmates than the top 35 European countries combined.

“People who break the law need to be held accountable and pay their debt to society,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States.

“At the same time, the collateral costs of locking up 2.3 million people are piling higher and higher. Corrections are the second fastest growing state budget category, and state leaders from both parties are now finding that there are research-based strategies for low-risk offenders that can reduce crime at far less cost than prison.”

The Pew study also reveals that before being incarcerated, two-thirds of male inmates were employed and more than half were the primary source of financial support for their children.

After release, former male inmates work nine fewer weeks annually and take home 40 percent less in annual earnings, (making $23,500 instead of $39,100). This amounts to an expected earnings loss of nearly $179,000 through age 48 for men who have been incarcerated.

Of former inmates who were in the bottom of the earnings distribution in 1986, two-thirds remained there in 2006, twice the number of non-incarcerated men.

“Pew’s past research shows a variety of factors influence economic mobility both within a person’s lifetime and across generations. This report finds that incarceration is a powerful determinant of mobility for both former inmates and their children,” said Scott Winship, research manager of the Economic Mobility Project of the Economic Mobility Project of Pew’s Economic Policy Group

The numbers are far worse for minorities.

The Pew study shows that one in 87 working-aged white men is in prison or jail, compared with 1 in 36 Hispanic men and 1 in 12 African American men. In fact, more African American men aged 20 to 34 without a high school diploma or GED are behind bars (37 percent) than are employed (26 percent).

The Pew study concludes that “drawn disproportionately from the poorly educated and the marginally employed, the millions of people in American jails and prisons faced poor mobility prospects before they entered the prison walls. But by the time they leave, this research finds, they face even smaller chances of finding and keeping jobs and moving up the income ladder.”

The study authors recommend that states invest in programs that reconnect former inmates with the labor market and remove obstacles to reintegration.

“To stop the revolving door of incarceration, states can invest in research-based policies and programs in the community that keep former inmates on the straight and narrow, improve public safety and cost far less than incarceration,” they conclude.

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