Hard time: Reconsidering the costs of prisons

Ever question whether or not you'd go to prison? Well, statistics show more people serve time than you might think.

Last year, the Pew Center on the States and the Public Safety Performance Project released data showing more than one out of 100 adults sit behind bars in America. Although a high number, it reflects a growing trend across the United States, taxing society almost to its breaking point.

Prison populations nearly tripled between 1987 and 2007, according to the Pew study. With the increase of inmates, states must spend more money to keep prisoners locked up.

"For this detention facility alone, my budget to run this facility is $12 million dollars annually," said Major Glen Matayabas, operator of Asheville's Detention Facility.

In 2007, all money spent on corrections across the 50 states hit $49 billion, according to the Pew study. They expect this money to increase by $25 billion in 2011.

This amount of money does little in reforming prisoners, which means we need change in our prison policy.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, of 15 states releasing a total of 272,111 inmates in 1994, roughly two-thirds went back to prison within three years. The department lists this as the latest national figure on former inmates returning to prison.

"You just can't be a revolving door," said Matayabas.

Keeping people locked up doesn't necessarily keep crime down. Many inmates commit crimes after release, sending them back to prison and keeping costs high.

Even though society may say we need to lock up every criminal, prison remains expensive. Figures showed the average cost of keeping an inmate locked up ran around $23,876 in 2005, according to Pew.
This cost affects you.
States spend money on a number of things, such as transportation, health services and higher education.

Between 1987 and 2007, states increased spending on higher education by 21 percent, according to Pew. During the same time, states increased spending on prison correction by 127 percent. Well, if two-thirds of released prisoners return within three years, then the states really don't get their money's worth. These numbers also say something about our society. Do we care more about locking people up than education? What do we value?

Also, many prisoners have families. When parents divorce, someone must pay child support. And while the responsibility of child support sits on an inmate's shoulders in prison, many find they cannot make the payments.

For example, Pew cites a 2001 Massachusetts study that reported more than three-quarters of the state's inmates failed to pay child support during the previous year. Massachusetts might only be one example, but the point remains that others suffer while prisoners serve time.

So we have states spending huge amounts of money on something that doesn't work well. We have former prisoners committing crimes after release, showing prisons don't change behavior as expected. And we have families struggling because of lack of child-support payments. We need a change in this system. Interestingly, this change could start before a person ever commits a crime.

The Pew cites a study following children into adulthood and found the children attending pre-kindergarten classes committed less crime in childhood and adulthood, while also increasing high school graduation rates, employment and salary. The benefit-cost ratio ran at 16 to 1, according to the study. This solution demonstrates a preventive example of dealing with crime.

A publication titled Confronting Confinement: A Report of The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons discusses violence in prison. The publication discusses how some prisons contain more inmates than they can handle, causing stress that almost guarantees violence in prison.

Confronting Confinement recommends rehabilitation and productivity programs which reduce violence and change behavior. The publication also recommends programs where criminals learn why they commit crimes and the consequences of their actions, which could lower recidivism rates by an estimated 10 percent.

"The answer is not always just building a new facility," said Matayabas. "Some of that money needs to go effectively for substance abuse and drug rehabilitation."

Also, prisons can focus on community and family bonds in order to reduce violence, according to Confronting Confinement. These good suggestions get to the core of the problem. Instead of throwing money at it and hoping for the best, we need prison reform to focus on changing behavior not only for the prisoner's sake, but for society as well. We must remember behavior learned in prison can potentially spill into the streets.

If this doesn't seem like enough to change policy, then society can also focus on the health costs. Every year, a released 1.5 million inmates carry some kind of life-threatening disease, according to Confronting Confinement. In addition, the publication estimates some 350,000 inmates suffer from mental illness.

Aside from the medical costs of treating these conditions, these medical conditions affect public safety as well because inmates return to society. Even though they may be criminals, don't we have a responsibility to maintain their health in order to rehabilitate them for return to society as well as for our own health?

"We use an acronym. It's called SSQC," said Matayabas. "And what that means is, to run a safe facility, it just has to be safe, it has to be secure, it has to be quiet and it has to be clean."

The publication recommends screening and testing inmates at every prison and jail across America in order to find and treat these high rates. Prisons should also focus on the mentally ill for the same reasons, according to Confronting Confinement.

But if we don't think we have a responsibility to our prisoners, then let's keep throwing money at them. Let's keep running high-population prisons so they can spread disease. And let's keep up the overcrowding so violence rates remain high. You see, when one of every 100 adults sits in lockup, we have a problem on our hands. And while prison might not directly affect you, it certainly affects the society around you.

Originally published in The Blue Banner, Spring 2009