Incarceration in the U.S. Costs more than $1 Trillion a Year, Washington University Study Claims
"'The economic toll of incarceration in the U.S. tops $1 trillion, and
more than half of that falls on the families and communities of the
people incarcerated, according to a recent study by Washington University researchers.
'For
every dollar in corrections spending, there’s another 10 dollars of
other types of costs to families, children and communities that nobody
sees because it doesn’t end up on a state budget,' said Michael
McLaughlin, the doctoral student and certified public accountant who led
the study. 'Incarceration doesn’t happen in a vacuum.'
The study’s authors claim to be the first to assign an actual dollar
amount to the societal costs of incarceration, not just the governmental
costs of running corrections systems, which many experts estimate to be $80 billion.
That
$80 billion number 'considerably underestimates the true cost of
incarceration by ignoring important social costs'” the researchers
wrote."
View the Working Paper
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