A new report says state jails in Texas are ineffective, expensive, and actually result in higher recidivism rates than Texas prisons. The report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation suggests taxpayers are getting a bad deal on their tax dollars and public safety. The report’s author, Jeanette Moll, says through the research, they have found state jails have become a costly substitute for prisons.” These facilities were actually exceeding the expenses and had higher recidivism rates than prisons, that adds up to a pretty bad deal for Texas taxpayers,” said Moll.
How much does incarceration cost?
Federal Prison
The federal prison system’s budget in fiscal year 2014 is $6.9 billion, which represents one-quarter of the budget of the Department of Justice. The average cost of incarcerating a federal prisoner in 2012 was $29,027.46, or $79.31 per day.
State Prisons
A 2012 study by the Vera Institute of Justice found that the true cost of prisons in 40 states, including things like hospital services and retirement benefits for staff, ran to $39 billion a year. That comes out to an average cost of $31,286 per inmate. New York led the states with a cost of $60,076 per inmate; Kentucky spent only $14,603.
In 2009, the Pew Center on the States calculated the average daily cost of prison, probation, and parole across 33 states and found that prison cost an average of $78.95 per inmate per day, while parole cost $7.47 and probation cost $3.42.
Published Jul 23, 2014 by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA | Last Updated by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA on Jul 20, 2023 at 12:48 am
