Legal Commentary

Government Estimates Costs of Incarceration vs. Supervised Release at about 7:1

Here, from the U.S. Courts website, is some food for thought for bail or probation in close cases:

In fiscal year 2007, it cost $24,922 to keep someone incarcerated in a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility for 12 months, and $22,871 to keep an inmate incarcerated in a community correction center.

For the same 12-month period ending September 30, 2007, it cost $3,621.64 for a federal offender to be supervised by probation officers.

Those figures translate in daily costs of $68.28 for a Bureau of Prisons facility, $62.66 for a community correction center, and $9.92 for supervised release.

For criminal defendants who had not yet been tried, the daily cost of pretrial detention services was $64.40 and the cost of supervision by pretrial services officers was $5.85.

Cost calculations were made by the Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Justice's Office of Federal Detention Trustee, and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Full post as published by New York Federal Criminal Practice on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).