New CEPR report on “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration”

Click here to read the new Center for Economic and Policy Research report titled “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration.”

This CEPR press release adds comments and details about the report:

“State and local governments are under tremendous fiscal pressure,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR and lead author of the report.  ”Shifting just half of the non-violent offenders from prison and jail to probation and parole could save state and local governments $15 billion per year.

The study points out that some of the main causes of the rise in incarceration rates are policies such as “mandatory minimums” and “three strikes” laws that often lead to long prison terms for non-violent offenders.  Earlier research on the connection between crime and incarceration suggests that state and local governments could shift non-violent offenders from jail and prison to probation and parole with little or no deterioration in public safety.

Among key findings are:

• In 2008, one in every 48 working-age men were in prison or jail
• Non-violent offenders make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population; non-violent drug offenders account for one-fourth of all offenders behind bars
• The total number of violent crimes in the United States was only about three percent higher in 2008 than it was in 1980.  Over the same period, the U.S. population increased by 33 percent while the prison and jail population skyrocketed by more than 350 percent.