In California:
- California has added 21 state prisons in 30 years, with the prison population expanding from 23,000 to 170,00
- The California Prison Map shows the location of the 61 federal, state and private prisons
- California’s recidivism rate is its 70%—twice the national average
- Taxpayers pay $11 billion per year to operate the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
- “It costs precisely as much to house, feed and guard one prisoner for one year in a California state prison as tuition, meals and housing cost for a student enrolled for one academic year at Harvard.” –Ted Koppel
- The cost per inmate per year is now $49,000
- Comparatively little of California’s prison budget goes toward rehabilitation
In the United States:
- 1 in every 31 adults in America is incarcerated or on supervised release
- 1 in 15 Americans will go to federal or state prison in their lifetimes, according to the US Department of Justice
- The New York Times puts the number of ex-offenders in the U.S. in the “tens of millions”
- Each year, 700,000 Americans return home from prison
- 25% of the world’s prisoners are in U.S. institutions
