Prison Overcrowding
Holding a Prisoner for 1 Year Costs $40,000 – More Than a Year of College
The pitfalls of prison overcrowding are crystallized nowhere better than America’s own state of California. In a country with the highest prison population in the world (1.96 million) the state’s 170,000 prisoners are crammed into facilities designed to hold half that many, at a cost of $14 billion–10% of the state budget. To make ends meet, California in 2009 considered simply letting 27,000 of them go.
The problem is often ascribed to aggressive laws that can make small crimes (petty theft, marijuana possession) a punishable by prison, but it’s also a question of rights: crowded conditions can be inhumane and prompt prison violence. In some cases, schools and prisons fight for the same budget dollars–which system should get more?
What you can do
Volunteer with Books Not Bars
Help Books Not Bars bring peace to urban neighborhoods.
From the blog
Black Men More Likely To Be Jailed for Drug…
"A black man is 12 times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than a white man and a black woman."
By the numbers
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2,310,984 prisoners were held in federal or state prisons or in local jails in 2008 http://bit.ly/tp0268 |
5,900 prisoners currently occupy the Chino prison, which was built to hold only 3,000 http://bit.ly/tp0268 |
