At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard (latimes.com)

The cost of imprisoning each of California's 130,000 inmates is expected to reach a record $75,560 in the next year, the AP reported. From the article: That's enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer Gov. Jerry Brown's spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes a record $11.4 billion for the corrections department while also predicting that there will be 11,500 fewer inmates in four years (alternative source) because voters in November approved earlier releases for many inmates. The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase. The result is a per-inmate cost that is the nation's highest -- and $2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard. Since 2015, California's per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10,000, or about 13%. New York is a distant second in overall costs at about $69,000.

Comments

Privitization

[Anonymous Coward]

California should privatize its corrections system. I bet with the free market in charge, they could get the per-inmate costs down to a year at Fresno Community College.

Re:we'll pay for prison

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they suggesting that Harvard students should be housed in California prisons?

Re:we'll pay for prison

[Hognoxious]

Then they'd refer to it as the slahmah.

Most of the money spent at college

[rsilvergun]

goes to education. Most of the money spent at a private prison goes to the people running the prison. Our priorities are just fine, provided you run a private prison and/or own stock in one.

Re:we'll pay for prison

[dgatwood]

Or just make them get law degrees. Harvard has nearly a 0% recidivism rate; people who go to Harvard almost never go back. :-)

Re:we'll pay for prison

[TimothyHollins]

So...Rob a Bank, get a free education?

In fall 2016, some 20.5 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities

This is one trillion five hundred billion dollars.

Fuck You.

I don't want to interrupt your delightful exposition, but as far as I can tell the proposal for tax-funded college doesn't necessarily require that we send everyone to Harvard.

In fact, if I may be so bold, I would tentatively suggest that it could be a tad tricky to fit 20.5 million students into Harvard, as it's only 85 ha (344 km^2) in size.
Looking into it, even if we assume that we can squeeze 4 students in per square meter (a proposal that is sure to deflate any hopes of reducing the number of Title IX charges this year), we're still 19.12 million students short!
We would need to stack our students 15 stories high, and that doesn't even take into account how we're gonna keep them standing still the entire semester, cause with entropy this thing will rapidly become un-manageable, and good luck keeping your customer satisfaction ratings up then! You can already expect a solid one-star ratings drop from the students the staff will have to park their cars on.

However, I'm sure you have already considered this before enlightening us all with your sparkling wit. So, with great anticipation and rock-hard nipples, I await your solution.

Thank you.

Re:Major impact actually from MJ and MMJ

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we legalized MJ and MMJ statewide.

Then we legalized Michael Jordan and Mrs. Michael Jordan statewide? They shouldn't have been outlawed in the first place.