From Prison Policy Initiative:
The costs of funding the police — especially the bloated budgets of militarized federal agencies in the Department of Homeland Security — have become a recurring theme in discussions about criminal legal system policy. At the same time, crime has declined and fewer people are incarcerated, yet spending on the criminal legal system has still increased faster than inflation. All parts of the system, from local jails to fines and fees and prison industries, deserve a clear accounting and a hard look. Understanding more clearly who benefits and who pays can help re-orient budgets away from punishment and exclusion and toward public health and safety.
In an update to our 2017 report, we find that the broad system of mass incarceration costs the government and families of system-involved people at least $445 billion every year.
In this report:
We provide the most significant costs of the nation’s globally-unprecedented system of mass incarceration and criminalization,
We show the relative scale of the various parts of that system,
We explain how funding for policing has rapidly increased, including the recent influx of federal dollars to immigration enforcement,
We highlight some of the costly yet often overlooked parts of the system,
and then
We share all of our sources so that journalists and advocates can build upon our
work
Read the full report here.
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