What's Your Priority?
The Government is Wasting Money on Incarceration
According to
figures in the Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook
of Criminal Justice Statistics (1998), the United States spends
approximately $34.18 billion dollars per year on incarceration (this
conservative figure includes state, federal, and local direct expenditures for
"corrections").
That
means that the government spends:
·
$93,652,054 each day
or …to lock people up.
·
$65,000 each minute
What
else could that money be spent on?
The
amount spent on incarceration each year could instead fund any of these:
· over
5.9 million K-12 students…
· over
7.4 million individuals in job training…
· over
6.8 million people in drug treatment…
· over
7 million children in childcare programs…
· over
1.4 million public housing subsidies…
· over
39.4 billion USDA Food Service meals…
The annual
amount spent on incarceration could instead fund more than 3 years of health
insurance for all 11 million US
children now without coverage.
A fully footnoted version of this
factsheet is available at www.prisonactivist.org/priorities.
Sources include: Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, Manpower Demonstration Research - JobStart Program, Center for Research on Economics and Social Policies, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities and the Children’s Defense Fund.
What would you like to see that money spent on? Contact
us with statistics you have that can be added to the list.
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