State Funding For Prisons Notes

State expenditures (including the District of Columbia) for adult prisons were estimated to be $22 billion for 1996, the most recent data available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Overall, between 1990 and 1996, state prison expenditures increased 83 percent from $12 billion to $22 billion. Of these, capital expenditures (on construction, land and equipment) were 6 percent of total expenditures, i.e., a total of $1.3 billion. Construction costs at $0.8 billion represented 4 percent, while equipment and land at $0.3 and $0.2 billion each represented about 1 percent of total expenditures.
Federal prison expenditures increased 160 percent, from $946 million to $2.5 billion, during the same period. http://www.publicbonds.org/prison_fin/prison_fin.htm There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S.
Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289 The already-taxed Bureau of Prisons network swelled to 39 percent above capacity through last September, and is expected to surge to more than 45 percent above its limit in 2018, says