Prison costs continue to spiral out of control

Hot from the latest Pew study presses:  prison spending outpaces all but Medicaid!  This new report--completely unsurprising for those of us who study prisons and sentencing--shows that correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data.   

As the study notes:

The remarkable rise in corrections spending wasn’t
fate or even the natural consequence of spikes in
crime. It was the result of state policy choices that
sent more people to prison and kept them there
longer. The sentencing and release laws passed in
the 1980s and 1990s put so many more people
behind bars that last year the incarcerated
population reached 2.3 million and, for the first
time, one in 100 adults was in prison or jail.

The escalation of the prison population has been
astonishing, but it hasn’t been the largest area of
growth in the criminal justice system. That would
be probation and parole—the sentenced
offenders who are not behind bars.

As I've noted before, probation and parole are sentencing and correction's dirty little secret--the hidden procedures that can extend sentences far beyond their original lengths. 

The Pew report is well worth reading in its entirety, but they also break out the information for individual states for those of you curious to see exactly how much of your state budget goes to corrections.  Trust me, you will be amazed!