The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

And here's the real killer: Despite the fact that every year we spend more money and lock up more people - and for longer periods of time - we are no less beleaguered by crime than ever.

It's time to acknowledge that putting people away has less and less connection with controlling crime.

While the comparison to school spending may not be a shock, there are plenty of shocks for those bothering to give even a cursory look to our criminal-justice problem, both nationally and locally. For example, a Pew Center on the States released a report last month which piggy-backed on its earlier finding that one in every 100 adults was behind bars.

The new report says that in the United States, one adult out of 31 is in the correctional system - that means either in prison, or on parole, or probation. That is a shocking 7.3 million adults - more than the populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas combined.

It's obvious that the sentencing, release and other criminal-justice policies have been a boon to the prison industry, but have done nothing to reduce the crime rate. (We can't imagine any other government program that has failed so absymally would be allowed, year after year, to expand its budget.)

And prisons and corrections have been devastating to budgets. Costs are rising faster for prisons than for any other government service except Medicaid. And health care is a huge factor in these costs, both physical and mental. In fact, four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in hospitals.

The national average for spending per inmate is $79; Philadelphia's higher rate is driven in part by overcrowding. Former Prison Commissioner Leon King says the city's prison population is 67 percent past capacity; that requires us to ship inmates to other facilities and pay for the privilege. In the past five years, spending for that has tripled. Meanwhile, spending on probation and parole, like managing offenders in the community, remains a fraction of prison costs; the national average is $4 a day. We should think of that next time we are outraged that a parolee kills a police officer. The solution is not just keeping everyone behind bars forever; also at issue is how little we spend to make sure parole or probation works.

Today, City Council is holding budget hearings on public safety. These are likely to be routine airing of budgets, and requests for more money. But we urge Council and the mayor to stop spending and start reforming.

It's worth taking a deeper look at reforms that the city could insitute to drive down populations and costs. Such an effort would dovetail with a national effort recently announced by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. A congressional task force will study the problem of why we have one-fifth of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners, and recommended needed reforms. The bad news: it will take two years. Meanwhile, since we're in the middle of a race for the city's next district attorney, maybe it's also time for at least one candidate to tackle this issue head-on.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20090420_Cost_of_prisons__it_s_criminal.html