"Keeping most prisoners behind bars lowers their cost to society."

Although the cost of building and maintaining prisons is high, the cost of not doing so appears to be higher. A recent study by Brookings Institution researchers found that keeping most prisoners behind bars lowers their cost to society.47

• The latest Bureau of Justice Statistics figures show that it costs, on average, less than $16,000 per year to keep a prisoner in state or federal prison; hidden and indirect expenses to taxpayers may inflate this figure to $20,000 or $25,000 per year.

• In the late 1970s, the Rand Corporation found in prisoner surveys in Texas, Michigan and California that the median number of nondrug crimes committed by prisoners the year before they were incarcerated was 15; similar surveys in Wisconsin in 1990 found 12 nondrug crimes, as did a 1993 New Jersey survey.

• One calculation based on an analysis of jury awards estimated that incarcerating a newly admitted criminal in New Jersey prevents a median annual social damage of $70,098.48

Thus, even at $25,000 a year, keeping the “average” criminal in prison is worthwhile, since on the streets he would commit an average of 12 or more nondrug crimes each year. For serious crimes, therefore, imprisonment pays for itself.49 However, this research underestimates the benefits to society because it considers only monetary benefits and ignores the benefits of exacting retribution, of possible rehabilitation and of the deterrent effects on others.

The failure to keep offenders in prison once they are there is another hazard created by a lack of prison space, and early release often leads to more crime.

• A Rand Corporation survey of former inmates in Texas found that 60 percent were rearrested within three years of their release and 40 percent of those were reconvicted.50

• Large numbers of Texas prisoners were released in 1991 to relieve overcrowding, and the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council reported that 48 percent were reincarcerated within three years.51

• A survey of 11 states showed that 62 percent of all released prisoners were rearrested within three years, 47 percent were reconvicted and 41 percent were reincarcerated.52

• A study of 22 states for the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 69 percent of young adults (ages 17-22) released from prison in 1978 were rearrested within six years, after committing an average of 13 new crimes.53

"Large numbers of Texas prisoners were released in 1991 to relieve overcrowding, and 48 percent were reincarcerated within three years."

As Bureau of Justice statistician Patrick Langan pointed out in Science, whatever the causes, in 1989 there were an estimated 66,000 fewer rapes, 323,000 fewer robberies, 380,000 fewer assaults and 3.3 million fewer burglaries than there would have been if the crime rate had been at the 1973 level. If only one-half or even one-fourth of the reductions resulted from increased incarceration, imprisonment has reduced crime significantly.54