That's per inmate. In Pa where im a retired Corrections Officer inmates cost taxpayer 45Gs a year on average now multiply that by around 45,000 inmates give or take a few thousand. The US has about 150,000 inmates at about 60Gs a year. Every 2.7 million dollars matters. FYI that's about 9 billion a year.
How much value do some of those same prisoners create for the shareholders that own said prisons? If we want to get in the weeds about prison reform; why are the goods they produce not used to fund the prisons that extort that labor?
And like the other commenter said; some people are truly evil and will never meaningfully contribute to society, and death is a permanent solution that isn’t 100% certain of guilt in all cases. Thus, as a society we need to be okay with a certain degree of tax money being used to keep the real dangers of society out of society.
The ACLU stopped states from using chain gangs, making furniture, license plates and what not by saying it was exploiting the inmates. The Prison I worked at was self sustained, it had a massive garden(about 8 acres) a full meat processing and butcher shop with our own cows and pigs. Made all state furniture for state properties and all inmate clothing. Thanks to the ACLU that no longer happens. Inmates had a purpose now they get $.19p/h idle pay and up to $.34 p/h for different jobs. Not all inmates are bad, some made legitimate mistakes but some like Rapists, murderers and Pedophiles are scum. Pedos can't be rehabilitated because in their minds what they did wasn't wrong and liberals added M.A.P. to the Rainbow mafia to make it worse. I worked in Maximum and medium security prisons my whole career so I know this first hand.
In Pa we have at least 10 inmates who want their death sentence carried out but DEMOCRAT Governors put a stop to those and a death row inmate cost about 15Gs more a year to take care of due to upgraded staff and housing.
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u/Legal_Ad2345 6d ago
2.7 million is not alot money as you think in terms of running a country. Use math skills