The Perpetual Prisoner Machine by Joel Dyer, 2000, Excerpts
A 1987 study by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice reported that the billions of dollars we are spending on the prison expansion are, in fact, a bargain. The NIJ study claimed that although it only costs around $25,000 a year to keep a criminal in prison, such incarceration saves America $430,000 per inmate because of the losses that would result from the inmate’s additional crimes if that criminal were not locked up. Saves “$430,000 per inmate”? The NIJ’s figure makes it sound as if every drug addict and petty thief in the joint must be living in a mansion and driving a Lexus when they’re not behind bars.
The report assumes that any criminal not in prison would commit no less than 187 additional crimes a year. And what about the rates of re-offense? The NIJ study calculates that all criminals not in prison would be constantly committing new crimes at a rate of one every 45.6 hours, 365 days out of the year. But several modern studies on recidivism have shown that only 22 to 34 percent of convicted felons re-offend within the first three years after their release. These same studies also found that drug offenders, who now constitute the majority of all prisoners, are actually the least likely group to recidivate. And those in prison for marijuana violations – one-sixth of all federal prisoners – have been found to pose little threat for ever re-offending.
It costs $25,000 a year in incarcerate a young inmate. As a prisoner sentenced to life ages, the price tag increases to $70,000 a year for inmates over the age of fifty-five. Another reason that this report has met with such skepticism in the criminology community is doesn’t compare the cost of incarceration to prison alternatives such as drug-treatment programs and supervised probation, which cost around $3,500 pre person per year, or even intensive probation, at $6,500 per person per year.
