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UK: study and article relevant to the U.S. :The real cost of prison. Moral, social and political arguments for and against prison are all very well. But what about value for money?

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

The real cost of prison Moral, social and political arguments for and against prison are all very well. But what about value for money? by Kevin marsh Monday July 28 2008 In 1993, the UK prison population was 44,000. Today it is over 83,000. This trend is set to continue: the government has recently announced an extra £3.8bn to create 20,000 more prison places. In the UK it is estimated that each new prison place costs £119,000 and that the annual average cost for each prisoner exceeds £40,000. Such huge public expenditure should not be spent without question. But where value for money models are widely applied in other state services like healthcare, they have rarely been used to test the value of the criminal justice sector. It might be true that incarceration reduces re-offending, but the cost of the prison system still has to justify that reduction...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on July 28, 2008 (boomark / email).