Until the economic downturn that started in 2008, few people outside of policy and media circles paid attention to the true costs of criminal justice. Overall, the country seemed to place more emphasis on lowering crime rates and fighting the “War on Drugs” rather than paying attention to the inflating costs of incarceration. To some
With fiscal uncertainty rampant and budget cuts looming state law makers are finally seeing the light when it comes to correction’s budgets. This light comes in the numbers of 7% and $50 billion. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, states spend 7% of their discretionary budgets, $50 billion a year, on corrections. This is second only to health care and education. Michigan’s Budget / Image courtesy huffingtonpost.com
States have taken these numbers to heart with extensive mid-year correctional budget cuts in 2011-2012. A total of 31 states made cuts to the tune of $805.9 million. Colorado led the pack with $112.5 million in cuts while South Dakota lagged behind with only $0.7 million in cuts. Surprisingly enough, California, with all of their fiscal issues, didn’t make any cuts.
The move to reduce correction’s budgets is focused on reducing both the number of prisoners incarcerated and the number of prisons. Texas, for example, is proposing a drastic shift in their correction’s ideology. They were planning on building more prisons to compensate for probation revocations. But now they are considering lightening sentences for probation violations. Texas is basing this new correction’s philosophy upon what others have called “shock probation.” The idea is to overwhelm the probationer with the concept of how bad life can be if they were to go to prison. This is the same concept used by the scared straight programs. If Texas was to follow through with this proposal, costs would be around $241 million for the program, not the $540 million it would cost to build three new prisons, according to State House member Jerry Madden. Texas was one of the 31 states to make mid-year cuts. They cut $20 million from their correction’s budget.
UNICOR — also known as Federal Prison Industries, Inc. — is a government-owned corporation operated within the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). It utilizes factory plant managers who oversee inmate workers to produce products and provide services. For the most part, UNICOR products and services are utilized to lower costs for state and federal agencies,
By Jean Trounstine Prisoners are probably one of the last groups anyone would expect to have access to their own blog. Some might argue that they should never get such a privilege. But keeping in mind that more than 95 percent of prisoners will one day return to society, we might consider how we want
We have profiled every prison within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Learn about each prison’s location, security level, educational and recreational offerings, and much more.
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