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Debating, praising Marc Mauer: On reducing state spending through prisoner reductions

Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune yesterday published an interesting interview with Marc Mauer, the head of the national Sentencing Project. I respect Mauer's work and concur with almost everything he said. But there was one part of his commentary that I disagree is applicable to Texas' budget situation. Grissom asked what pitfalls legislators should avoid, and Mauer began his answer:It?s common to say that it costs something like $25,000 a year to keep someone locked up in prison. But if you let one person out of prison, you don?t necessarily save $25,000 because of the fixed costs of running a prison. If you have a 500-person prison and now you have 499, you still have the same number of guards, the same number of administrators, the same number of health care workers and all that...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 24, 2011 (boomark / email).