A question recently posted to Quora asks, “In what ways could prison costs be reduced? In the U.S., more than two million people are in jail, which costs more than $22,000 per person, per year.” Tim Dees, a retired police officer, gives his response, below. Take a look and add your own thoughts in the comments.
1. Get rid of the death penalty. If a man is sentenced to life in prison in his twenties, it will cost about a million dollars to keep him there until he dies. A typical death penalty case costs around $5 million, because of the differing rules of custody and the costs of appeals.
2. Greatly expand the role of community corrections, but with dramatically reduced caseloads for community corrections (probation and parole) officers. The typical CC officer has a caseload of between 50 and 200 “clients.” Take that down to maybe ten. This would be expensive, but not as expensive as prison. It typically costs $25,000 per year to keep someone in prison. The ten-to-one community corrections plan would cost around $125,000 per officer, probably less.
3. Dramatically increase funding for community mental health care. A significant number--as many as a third--of jail and prison inmates have serious mental health issues. If these illnesses were treated and managed at the community level, many of them would be able to stay out of jail and even live productive lives. As it is, when these people are untreated and they “act out,” the police are called and there’s no place to take them except jail.
4. Consider releasing one-time murderers back into the community on close supervision, with a mandate to pay restitution to the family of their victims. Murders associated with other crimes (narcotics, robbery, rape, gang activity) indicate deeper criminal tendencies, but many people who commit only a single homicide with no associated crime are unlikely to re-offend. These are often crimes of passion which shouldn’t be ignored, but keeping them in prison does no one any good.
