Inmate Spending Report
Max Duron
UTEP
English 1301
November 9, 2012
Jorge Gomez
Abstract
Inmate spending is an issue that is very serious however it lacks public interest greatly, due to the lack of public interest most people don't even realize that it is an issue; a vast amount of people are completely shocked to learn that the United States spends on twice to three times more money on inmates then on its students every year depending on the state. This is a very big part of the issue because how could we be spending so much more money on inmates and their incarceration than on education, obviously these are the cons of spending so much money on prison inmates, however spending that much money has its pros. From the billions of money spent on prison systems a good amount goes to keep the general public safe from these prisoners, so providing public safety is always a pro and allows the public to have peace of mind. Regardless of public safety, this is a big issue because inmates are receiving free housing, healthcare, nutrition, and plenty of benefits all free of charge, when people outside of criminals that obey that law and have committed no crimes have to pay not only for their own healthcare, housing, and nutrition for themselves but pay for inmates with their taxes as well. The question is, why do I have to pay for prisoners when I can hardly afford my own expenses?
Introduction:
Inmate spending is regulated by the state in which the prison is located in, meaning that in states with high crime rates like California will spend much more on inmates than states with smaller crime rates like Hawaii; as time goes by, inmate spending also tends to increase every decade significantly, meaning that crime in not only increasing but the United States believes that more money is needed to keep the inmates incarcerated and healthy. There for the correlation with inmate spending tends to be, the bigger and more populous the state, the more crime, there for more money will be spent on the inmates. Other issues such as death row increase the money being spent annually on inmates, providing free health care for sick inmates with HIV for example, how much it costs tax payers annually to keep inmates in prison, and a new idea of vouchers for prisoners. All these are issues that prison systems impose on the public and raise some concerns.
Death Row:
The
death penalty has been a very controversial issue for years, whether or not it
is humane to take capital punishment into our own hands, whether or not it is
immoral, but the issue that most people oversee is the significantly high cost
it takes to keep an inmate in death row annually. It costs on average 90,000
dollars a year for an individual inmate on death row and an average of ten
years before the inmates are actually executed, costing billions around the
country annually from tax payers money (prisonpolicy2010). And one of the most
costly parts about the death penalty is the execution itself, the execution
must be humane meaning that the lethal injection is performed which costs 351
dollars with an addition of thousands of dollars paid to the doctors and other
people involved with the execution.
Not to mention that since 1973, 141
people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of being
innocent (deathpenaltyinfo); which rises the question of how many inmates might
have been executed while being innocent and how much has it cost tax payers
since 1973. People might have a very serious issue with the huge quantities
being spent to execute inmates, especially when large amounts of people are
completely against capital punishment and when all that money does come from
their taxes after all. This is why people are taking action with interest
groups to help raise awareness of the issue or and abolish capital punishment
or at least lower the amount spent on the issue annually.
Inmate
Healthcare
It is obvious that every inmate will
at one point or another need some kind of healthcare, whether it is physical
like a broken bone, or psychological treatment, but in more serious cases
inmates might need healthcare for the HIV virus. Having HIV in prison is very
costly because of all the healthcare that is needed to keep the inmates
healthy. In 2007 2.2 million people in prison were reported to have the virus
which cost millions of dollars in treatment and prisons agreeing that it is a
burden to have to deal with an issue as serious as HIV, not only is it
expensive but the right professionals have to be hired to treat the inmates
properly (public health records 2007). The problem with HIV is that people
outside of prison have to pay for their own medication and treatment which
costs thousands of dollars annually per individual, this is a problem because
people think that it is unfair honest individuals have to pay for something
they can hardly afford, when prisoners who have the stigma of being dangerous criminals,
get the treatment completely free of charge due to tax payers money.
This problem can be considered as an
outrage for most people who don’t even have the disease, one can only imagine
what it must be like if they actually had the disease and had to make those
expenses every year to stay not only healthy but alive. So then why give
inmates free healthcare treatment? Why keep people with bad reputations and
negative stigmas healthy free of charge? Well regardless on the side people
might take, these are in fact people and the government believes that no matter
what these people might have done, they must be treated humanely and kept
healthy because it’s not only the law but the right thing to do. Even though
treating HIV in prison is incredibly costly, should so much money be spent
annually to keep prisoners healthy? That’s a question individuals have to
decide upon.
Annual
Money Spent on Inmates
It is a known fact that inmate
population and spending keeps increasing every year, it has been for the last
40 years, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon; as a matter of fact 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 year
(price of prisons 2012). This averages out to around 20,000-25,000 dollars per
inmate annually, which to most people doesn’t really seem as much without the
use of something to compare those expenditures with, but when comparing inmate
spending to something as student spending the numbers then become an issue. On
average only 8,000 dollars are spent on students annually, which is almost a
third on what is spent on inmates, which then brings up the question, why does
America spend more money on its inmates then on its students? That’s really
when inmate spending becomes a problem, when it is compared with different
issues such as educational spending.
With the use of interest groups,
people get together to talk about this serious issue, to compare inmate
spending with education not just to lower inmate spending but to raise
education expenditures as well. People want to lower prison expenditures for
this reason but then there are also different groups who want to keep prison
spending were it is for several reasons. People want large amounts of money to
be spent because some people need to feel the closure and comfort that they are
safe due to well organized and functional security systems in prison, which of
course are very costly, also families that have a member in prison want that
individual to be well taken care of and provided for by the government, and
lastly the people who work in prisons want to not only get paid well but also
feel comfortable and safe in their working environment. All these factors can
be very costly, so again it all depend what conditions an individual like a
student who would want to lower the cost for education to go up, or a family
member that would want it to remain the same, all these individuals might live
under different conditions that determine his/her opinion on how much money
should the government spend on prison and its inmates.
Vouchers
Lastly one of the most controversial
and radical factors for prison expenditures is a newly developed idea involving
inmate vouchers. This new idea 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 (prison vouchers 2012).
This idea is so radical
because like said before certain assumptions are carried when people think of
inmates, that these people might be dangerous and not very deserving of such
privileges such as vouchers, when these assumptions are given to inmates many
people get angry and believe that it is highly unnecessary to provide these
opportunities to inmates when some free people don’t even have them. But other
people think it is necessary to provide privileges to promote good behavior and
improve prison life quality’ of course having these vouchers will increase
prison spending by billions annually which most likely will upset most tax
payers and any in creasy in tax seems to upset most Americans greatly.
Conclusion
Inmate spending is a
serious issue which unfortunately severely lacks interest. Thanks to interest
groups the issue is becoming more vivid each decade, but for now the facts are
clear. Billions are spent every year to provide all kinds of care for inmates,
whether it be healthcare or housing, or even a new idea such as prison
vouchers, whatever the case might be America is spending huge quantities of
money in prisons and inmates. Whether an individual believes it is unfair that
more money is being spent on inmates than public students, or not enough to
keep citizens safe. Whatever an individual beliefs the fact is that billions
will be spent every year regardless of the public’s opinion and the
incarceration rates will keep increasing, and with things such as death row the
costs seem no chance of decreasing anytime soon, so it is up to individuals to
really decide whether criminals deserve so much care compared to free honest
citizens.
References
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
Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers; Christian Hendrickson, Ruth Dalaney. Vera Institute of Justice United States (2012) Paw Center on the StatesnUnited States NCJRS Abstract
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=259605
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 October26, 2012
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