Rhode Island, a state with a prison population of about 3,800 men and women, has the highest cost per inmate for one year of imprisonment in the country, the New York Times reported Feb. 29.
The article, based on a recent report from the Pew Center on the States, focused on the country's incarceration rate, the highest in American history. "For the first time, more than one in every one hundred adults is now confined in an American jail or prison," the report said.
The Times article mentioned Rhode Island only very briefly, using the state's $45,000 annual cost-per-inmate as an example of just how high state spending on corrections can be.
"We don't know what methodology they used in the (Times)," said Tracey Poole '85, a spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Department of Corrections.
Despite saying that expense reporting standards are not the same nationwide and that other states may calculate their costs differently, Poole admitted that there are some excessive costs involved with Rhode Island's corrections system.
Rhode Island is one of the few states that houses its eight correctional facilities in one complex - the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston. "We have all of the costs associated with someone coming in and going out," Poole said of the consolidated design.
In addition, she attributed costs to the facilities themselves. Not all the buildings were designed to be prisons; several of the buildings, for instance, were once mental hospitals, resulting in what Poole called "less than optimal sight lines."
In the maximum-security facility, for example, one guard can only watch twelve prisoners at a time. With ideal sight lines, that same guard could be watching nearly twice that many, she said. The wages paid to the extra staff necessary to accommodate these design flaws help account for the high costs, Poole said.
Poole also cited the state's high cost of living, diverse population and highly unionized work force as reasons for the inflated bill.
High expenditures have not escaped scrutiny, however. In a Feb. 4 press release, Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 announced statewide budget cuts of over $130 million. When asked how these cuts would affect the Department of Corrections, Poole said that they forced the department to take a "hard look at the way (it does) business." But she added that she did not see any drastic changes in the immediate future.
The Pew Center's report says that, in the face of "mushrooming bills," states are seeking less expensive alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders. According to John Hardiman, the state's chief public defender, this does not seem to be the case in Rhode Island.
"I don't see any attempt by the judiciary or prosecutors across the state to lessen the load on the ACI," he told The Herald. Budget cuts are unlikely to change the way the prison system is run, Hardiman added.
