America spent more than $60 billion for state prisons and local jails, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report. That included some $40 billion by states and about $20 billion by cities and counties. The data includes fiscal years 2005-2011.
“Between 2005 and 2011, total spending by local governments fluctuated between $1.6 trillion and $1.7 trillion,” the Dec. 13, 2013, report said. Corrections spending fluctuated between $25.8 billion and $28.4 billion, or 1.6 percent of the total.
Local governments spent 84 percent of their total corrections expenditures on correctional institutions, such as local jails and detention centers, in 2011.
This is up from 80 percent in 2005. Local government spent the remainder of their corrections budget on other functions, such as supervising offenders in the community and maintaining and operating non-residential halfway houses. Local government also paid for current operations and capital outlay expenditures to operate and build correctional institutions.
Current operations expenditures consist of officer and employee compensation, utilities and any supplies or contractual services not covered by capital outlay.
Capital outlay expenditures include major repairs of institutions, constructions and purchase of equipment having a useful life of more than five years.
Local governments outspent state government in capital outlay expenditures from a low 34.1 percent in 2005 to a high 56.4 percent in 2010.
“Between 2005 and 2011, local governments annually spent the largest percentage of funds on education (36.0 percent to 38.4 percent), followed by health care and hospitals (7.3 percent to 7.7 percent), police protection (4.9 percent to 5.0 percent), highways (3.7 percent to 4.0 percent), public welfare (3.2 percent to 3.5 percent), and judicial-legal services (1.3 percent to 1.4 percent),” the report stated.
