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STATE'S HIGH COST OF JAILING - Prison Population Doubling Despite Low Crime Rate, Stagnant Population |
| (05/16/2005) |
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West Virginia puts a lot of criminals in jail. During the past ten years, West Virginia's prison population has doubled. At the same time the state's population has remained about the same. During the ten year period, the state's crime rate has remained about the same. It is fascinating to consider West Virginia taxpayers pay about $6,500 each year for every full-time college student. But state taxpayers must pay almost $20,000 a year for each person incarcerated by the Division of Corrections. The state has increased spending on prisons five times faster than it has on higher education. The allotment for a student in public schools, depending on which figures you use, is somewhere between $4,500 to $6,000 per student. A new report on the cost of corrections pounds home a startling fact - incarceration is eating away at the the state's budget and at the expense of education. The West Virginia Council of Churches, in partnership with a national organization called Grassroots Leadership and the Washington, D.C. based Justice Policy Institute, have produced a report titled, "Protecting the Future: Moderating West Virginia's Budget Crisis." In 2001, West Virginia had the highest incarceration growth rate in the entire United States 9.3 percent. The report concludes that the funding to keep up with the high incarceration rate is coming at the expense of social service programs and education. The report says "The state has increased spending on prisons five times faster than it has on higher education. From 1992 to 2002, state appropriations for higher education went up 23 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, while state appropriations for the Division of Corrections went up almost 140 percent. By contrast, the DOC appropriations between 1981 and 1992 remained basically stable. Although West Virginia has a low crime rate, its prison population doubled between the years 1992 and 2002. The report makes several recommendations to help with the problem, including full funding for the Day Reporting Center initiative that would reduce the numbers of nonviolent offenders who need to be jailed and granting more parole.
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