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inanna

(3,547 posts)
Thu Jul 7, 2016, 07:24 PM Jul 2016

U.S. spending on prisons grew at three times rate of school spending: report

Source: Reuters

July 7, 2016

(Reuters) - U.S. state and local spending on prisons and jails grew at three times the rate of spending on schools over the last 33 years as the number of Americans behind bars ballooned under a spate of harsh sentencing laws, a government report released Thursday said.

U.S. Secretary of Education John King said the report's stark numbers should make state and local governments reevaluate their spending priorities and channel more money toward education.

Between 1979 and 2012, state and local government expenditures grew by 107 percent to $534 billion from $258 billion for elementary and secondary education, while corrections spending rose by 324 percent to $71 billion from $17 billion, the U.S. Department of Education report found.

In that same period, the population of state and local corrections facilities surged more than four-fold to nearly 2.1 million from around 467,000, more than seven times the growth rate of the U.S. population overall. The prison population shot up following the widespread adoption of mandatory minimum sentence laws in the 1990s.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-spending-prisons-grew-three-times-rate-school-221329638--business.html

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U.S. spending on prisons grew at three times rate of school spending: report (Original Post) inanna Jul 2016 OP
Ye shall reap what ye sow. Schools are cheaper and produce much better results. . . nt Bernardo de La Paz Jul 2016 #1
"Land of the "Free"" n/t arcane1 Jul 2016 #2
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's sort of the legacy of 40 years of restrictive law... Shandris Jul 2016 #3
Racial Disparities in Incarceration jtuck004 Jul 2016 #4
Meh. Igel Jul 2016 #5
 

Shandris

(3,447 posts)
3. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's sort of the legacy of 40 years of restrictive law...
Thu Jul 7, 2016, 07:28 PM
Jul 2016

...making in a society with an ever-increasing population and an ever-increasing sense of atomization.

When you want everything controlled with laws, there has to be a consequence for breaking them. Laws=Arbitrary Punishments. You can't get rid of just one side of the equation (although you can proportionally adjust both).

Bear in mind...this is with the complete and abject lack of corporate policing. The number SHOULD be much, much higher (as horrifying as that is!)

 

jtuck004

(15,882 posts)
4. Racial Disparities in Incarceration
Thu Jul 7, 2016, 07:34 PM
Jul 2016
African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population
According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%
...
About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites


There is a whole page at http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

Seems very profitable.

Igel

(35,191 posts)
5. Meh.
Fri Jul 8, 2016, 12:20 AM
Jul 2016

That would be, at most, an additional $54 billion/year. Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure, but a lot of prisons are really expensive.

However, the expense couldn't have stayed at $17 billion. With new buildings and technology, increased wages it would have increased so that additional $54 billion for education is fantasy. Few prisons from before 1975 are acceptable these days. Schools you can retrofit, and they cost less.

State expenses for corrections have gone from 6.8% of education funding to 13.3%.


I'd note that a lot of increased education spending in the country has been at the federal level. And that 1979 and 2012 form a very biased set of years and can only produce a skewed trendline: 2012 was after all the budget cuts from the recession hit education, and 1979 was the peak spending before the Carter/Reagan recession hit. Pick 2015 and a lot of the monies had been restored to education, can't have that show up in the record when you're talking down to people.

I'd also note that more than one study has shown that for all the increased spending--in some areas more than a mere doubling--education results haven't kept pace. Double the money, boost a lot of learning by a fairly small amount. A lot of that money went to funding federal mandates that Congress was supposed to fund but didn't, BTW. It still hasn't.


That the prison population increased so much so fast with laws that had the support of most of the communities they affected at the time should be a warning: Zero-tolerance, vindictive laws are a bad idea. At the same time, rehabilitation requires working the ex-con into a stable social network. When there's recidivism at a high rate, it's not US society that's failed the guy (mostly), it's that particular community and family.

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