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December 15, 2009
Colorado's prison spending tops all other states
DATA GEEK: Colorado's prison spending tops all other states
December 11, 2009
Prisons and other programs for criminal offenders consumed a bigger chunk of Colorado’s 2008 government budget than for any other state, according to data the U.S. Census Bureau released Wednesday.
The bureau’s annual survey of state government finances found Colorado spent $996 million on corrections programs in 2008, which accounts for 5.1 percent of the state’s general revenue that year. No other state spent more. The second-ranking state for corrections spending was Maryland, which spent $1.4 billion or 4.7 percent of its revenue. On average, states spent 3.3 percent of their revenues on corrections.
Colorado was home to 23,274 state and federal prison inmates last year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The prison population in Colorado rose 4.5 percent each year on average from 2000 to 2007, which is more than double the national average increase.
The compilation of government finances reveals other facts about Colorado’s spending priorities:
* A top priority was education, which consumed $7.9 billion or 41 percent of state revenue. Colorado ranks 14th for state government spending on education. Remember this doesn’t include the largest source of money for kindergarten through 12th-grade education, which is local property taxes.
* Public welfare programs such as aid to poor families cost the state $4.5 billion or 23 percent of revenues. Colorado ranks 39th for the portion of its budget spent on public welfare. This also doesn’t include local government spending, which varies a lot from county to county.
* State spending on highway projects was $1.3 billion or 7 percent of revenues. The national average state spending on highways is also 7 percent. This doesn’t include money spent at the local level such as road projects run by the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation District.
http://www.gazette.com/articles/colorado-90664-programs-data.html
Posted by lois at December 15, 2009 03:07 PM