Annotated Bib

[BOOK][B] State prison expenditures JJ Stephan (2001) - cacs.unlv.edu A Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report  (2004) Database: Google Scholar

    This source is taken from a book called State Prison Expenditures and it illustrates with not only written documentation, but with graphs as well, just how much the nation really spends on state prison each year, specifically focusing on the year of 2001. The book claims that prison systems spent on average 38.2 billion dollars during the physical year of 2001, and the average annual cost per State inmate was $22,650 or $62.05 per day during this specific year. This book also mentions a shocking fact on how State correctional expenditures increased 145% in 2001 constant dollars from $15.6 billion in 1986 to $38.2 billion in 2001. In other words this book gives facts on how prison spending has increased over time and how it will keep increasing, the book mentions what the money is used on specifically for example health care for the inmates, and the book has many graphs to give the reader a visual understanding of what is really being talked about. This is a very valuable resource because it not only speaks about but visually shows how much money the State Prison's in the nation spend, and exactly how they spend it.

Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers; Christian Hendrickson, Ruth Dalaney. Vera Institute of Justice United States (2012) Paw Center on the States United States NCJRS Abstract https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=259605

    This is a study that focuses on who much tax payer money is used for State Prisons nation wide. The study illustrates how total taxpayer money in the United States that went specifically for prison spending increased by 13.9% in the past decade, an increase of 33.6 billion dollars to a 39 billion dollar tax payer income used for State Prison. An interesting point about this study is that it focuses mainly on the staff of the prison and not the inmates, the study explains how tax payer money is used to pay the correction facility employees. The employee cost range from health care costs, to retiree programs or annual salaries, this is to show to the public that tax payer money for prison spending not only goes to its inmates but also to keep prisons safe, secure, and humane not only to the inmates but to its employees as well. This is important to my research because it gives a new side to the issue with prison spending, illustrating how some of the money is used for public safety or a safe work environment, and not only spent on keeping the inmates healthy. 

Limited Spending: An Analysis of Correctional Expenditures on Antiretroviral for HIV-Infected Prisoners N Zaller, P Thurmond, JD Rich Public Health Reports, 2007 – ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

    This report speaks about how HIV within the prison system is an issue. The reason this is an issue is because having a disease as serious as this within the system can be very costly and even have a danger of spreading. The State Prison has the burden of having to take care of inmates by providing medication and keeping constant record on who is infected and trying to prevent the disease from spreading, this is all very cost effective and a burden on correctional facilities to be providing free health care to people who don’t at all deserve it. There were a total of 2.2 million inmates infected with the disease costing millions more of tax payer money to provide care and treatment for these people because the government thinks it is necessary to provide free tax payer money healthcare to criminals who have killed and raped innocent people. This is important to my research because I am a strong believer that inmates shouldn't even get a single cent from tax payer money to go to health care, especially millions of dollars.

Volokh A. PRISON VOUCHERS. University Of Pennsylvania La Review [serial online]. February 2012:160(3):779-863. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA, Accessed October 26, 2012

            This article talks about wanting to give prison systems vouchers in order to improve prison policies, in other words the voucher would force prisons to compete for prisoners allowing the inmates to choose what prison they wanted to go to instead of being assigned bureaucratically, giving prisoners more freedom and valuable benefits in exchange for constitutional rights; Thus giving inmates better security, improved healthcare, and better educational opportunities. In other words make prison like college where inmates apply and get excepted into the prison, even be fought for by the prisons for particular inmates, while giving the inmates better health care than regular citizens get, but absolutely free of any cost to them just simply for being criminals. This thought makes me absolutely sick thinking that inmates will be pampered and educated for free because for being criminals who broke the law in different ways, this is important for my research because it would raise tax costs for prison which is completely unnecessary, costs need to be lowered down not raised to improve inmate privileges.

Thurston, M. (2010). Bureaucratic Capacity and State Prison Populations: Examining the Impact of Bureaucratic Capacity with State-Level Data. Conference Papers – Southern Political Science Association, 1.

            This author provides an interesting perspective on inmate spending correlations; this article is interesting because it speaks of the benefits on raising taxes to go toward the prison system. The interesting part of the article is that it mentions that we shouldn’t be spending more on the inmates but on the contrary the men who enforce the law and security of the prison systems, this is a way to spend money on the system and not on the inmates directly who don’t deserve the money. This article mentions that by spending more money on law enforcement crime will go down meaning that less money will be spent of inmates themselves there for having an alternate more productive way of spending the tax payer money. This appeals to my research completely because this is an alternate more productive way to send tax money in prisons, instead of spending it in inmates, spend it on a way to reduce crime not encourage it with unnecessary prison privileges.

Torre, M., & Fine, M. (2005). Bar None: Extending Affirmative Action to Higher Education in               Prison. Journal Of Social Issues, 61(3), 569-594. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2005.00421.x

            Yet another article focused on Affirmative Action pushing for inmate education. This article supports education in prison systems and the reason is to improve the inmates life not only inside correctional facilities but for once they get out of prison, to help these people become something of themselves once they are allowed to leave the correctional facilities. This is all in hope to lower unemployment rates for once the inmate is released from prison. The author hopes for better standards of living for these people and to make them a part of society one they get a new beginning after being released from prison, this is in a hope to give inmates a second chance once they are released. Only problem with these good intentions is that it is very costly and some inmates go back to crime after being released meaning that the educational training was unnecessary and a waste of time, only a few inmates actually end up benefiting from these advantages, while the majority abuse from them. This contributes to my research by giving a positive view on why sometimes it is ok to spend extra money on certain inmates to allow them to contribute to society after being released, while at the same time illustrating that most of the time this is a waste of  money because of how it is abused by certain inmates.

Ted.com David R. Dow: Lessons from death row inmates(2010)

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_r_dow_lessons_from_death_row_inmates.html?quote=1689

            Mr. Dow is a lawyer who defends death row inmates and in this vide explains why he chooses to defend them, to stay in the topic of my research the key concept that he speaks about is spending. According to Dow we are simply spending too much money on the death penalty over 90,000 dollars a year for inmates on death row and much more is spent on the lawyers and court cost, this man wants to find way to lower those costs and more successfully trial these people to not only have fair trials for the criminals but to improve spending. This obviously appeals to my research because too much money is spent on death row inmates and there needs to be a more efficient, cheaper, and economical way to deal with these special cases to better improve tax payer money and improve correctional facility spending.