Budgetary Implications of Mass Imprisonment

Introduction

The rate of imprisonment in America has increased by more than five times since the early 1970s. While the rate was approximately 140 men and women for a population of 100,000 people, it currently stands at more than 700 individuals for a similar population segment. This implies that a total of more than 2 million persons get imprisoned annually. Additionally, the imprisonment rate for African Americans is higher relative to that of white Americans, compared to the way it was prior to the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). This makes America the leader in mass incarceration of offenders, globally. The corrections sector of the American government should, therefore review this social system for execution of appropriate policies. Another social system that is considered to go hand in hand with the criminal justice system is the education system. Of particular interest, in this paper, are the public learning facilities, which rely principally on government funding. These systems are characterized by a wide array of social concerns such as racial profiling and inequality, among others. The key concern in this paper is to examine the budgetary implications of mass imprisonment and public education on the American public and how these two social systems interact.

Literature Review

Budgetary Implications of Mass Imprisonment

Research shows that in the year 2008, local, state, and federal governments used money amounting to 75 billion dollars solely on rehabilitation of criminal offenders, with the larger amount of money being apportioned and allocated to incarceration of these criminals (Haapanen, 2009). The larger share of this immense cost of corrections is borne by local and state governments. It is estimated that State government institutions accommodate 60 percent of the total number of inmates, as well as, cover approximately the same percentage of overall correction expenses. On the other hand, Local government facilities hold roughly a third of all criminal offenders. These local correctional facilities, however, do not incur the equivalent one third of entire corrections expenses. Ultimately, federal government corrections facilities house an inmate population that is lower than 10 percent of the total number of criminals. Similarly, federal government incurs corrections expenditures that are less than 10 percent of entire nationwide corrections expenses (Haapanen, 2009).

This trend of mass incarceration by different arms of the American government is costing the taxpayers a large amount of money (Welsh, Farrington & Sherman, 2001). This is evident from the fact that national spending on corrections, inclusive of prisons, parole and probation, has increased by more than four times over the past twenty years, making States' corrections the most rapidly growing item in the American budget, following healthcare. Despite the alarming nature of these rates, many people are oblivious of the fact that expenses in different corrections facilities only account for a part of the total fiscal obligation, which a state is expected to meet when it sends a criminal to prison or any other correctional facility. Existing statistics on corrections facilities, therefore, underestimate the entire cost incurred while incarcerating prisoners (Welsh et al., 2001).

Some of the prison costs that are left out of the corrections budget include employees' taxes and benefits, contributions towards pension plans and healthcare contributions of retirees (Welsh et al., 2001). Additionally, capital costs incurred in construction and renovation of correctional facilities are not included in the corrections departments' budget. Others include nationwide prison administrative expenses and inmate services that get funded through healthcare and education agencies. Clearly, a wide array of indirect expenses is not accounted for, due to reliance of statistics principally on expenditures of corrections institutions. Even though these corrections often cater for the majority of jail expenditures, the budgets that they draft fail to reflect the comprehensive state expenditure on impris-onment (Cohen, Rust, Steen & Tidd, 2004).

The magnitude of this discrepancy in corrections department budget and the actual money spent has been shown by various researchers. For instance, research conducted by () found out that the entire cost incurred by tax payers in all states is higher by a percentage of 13.9, than the projected cost indicated in the budgets of the different states' corrections budgets. This percentage is derived from the total cost imposed on the American taxpayers, which was found to be $39 billion, about $ 5 billion more than the $34 billion depicted in corrections budgets only (Haapanen, 2009). The greatest causes of cost discrepancies as mentioned were found to be outside corrections departments' budgets, as mentioned earlier, and they included:

* Underfunded contributions to health care for retired corrections employees amounting to $1.9 billion.

* Contributions by states to health care of retired employees of the constituent corrections departments amounting to $837 million.

* Employees' benefits like health insurance amounting to $613 million.

* Contributions by states to pension plans at about $598 million.

* Capital costs of $485 million.

* Health care costs for correction facilities' population at $335 million and underfunded contributions for corrections employees' pensions ($304 million).

As a result, of the inadequacy of statistics, to depict the true picture of the cost of mass imprisonment policy makers fail to develop and execute appropriate policies. Additionally, other stakeholders such as taxpayers may end up contributing more towards corrections without knowing.

Collateral Costs of Mass Imprisonment

Mass imprisonment does not only lead to incurrence of costs mentioned previously, rather, there are indi¬rect costs associated with the trend. These include social services costs, child welfare expenses and edu¬cation costs. The indirect costs are principally borne by government institutions, save for the department of corrections (Cohen et al., 2004)

The imprisoned women and men also incur social and economic costs related to prison. The same case applies to the imprisoned persons' families and neighbourhoods from which they come. For instance, incarceration strains these third parties financially especially if the imprisoned person was the sole provider. Imprisonment also cuts off bonds between children and their parents