Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Criminal Law

: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Virginia's prison gravy train

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Virginia's prison gravy train Roanoke Times, March 28, 2008 By Ronald Fraser Fraser has a Ph.D. and writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. In Virginia's booming prison economy there are winners and losers. Inmates face financial ruin and state taxpayers lose too -- about$29,000 per year, per inmate. Prison entrepreneurs, for whom each inmate is a government subsidized business opportunity, are the big winners. Growing nationally by 3.4 percent a year for the past 10 years, federal, state and local prisons hold 2.3 million inmates -- one half of whom are nonviolent and small-time drug law offenders. In 2006, prison populations went up in 41 states, including an increase of 1,344 inmates in Virginia...continue to full post

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