Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Prison costs

I have known for quite some time that the war on drugs has been killing education. It is just too expensive to lock people in cages. In California prison guards make similar salaries to professors. I doubt prisons cost less than colleges to construct and unlike college time in prison makes it almost impossible for people to find jobs. So the long term economic damage is greater than the cost of locking prisoners away.

This article has some great statistics on this subject. For example, California spends seven times as much per year locking up someone than it would spend putting that same person through college.

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