The CDCr has just released REPORT 2009-107.2 SUMMARY – MAY 2010. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Inmates Sentenced Under the Three Strikes Law and a Small Number of Inmates Receiving Specialty Health Care Represent Significant Costs

The report states the obvious. Three Strikes is expensive (and I’d add it is no deterrent) and health care costs are huge and dominated by a minority (aging) group. To quote:

Our review of California’s increasing prison cost as a proportion of the state budget and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (Corrections) operations revealed the  following:

Inmates incarcerated under the three strikes law (striker inmates):
– Make up 25 percent of the inmate population as of April 2009.
– Receive sentences that are, on average, nine years longer-resulting in about $19.2 billion in additional costs over the duration of their incarceration.
– Include many individuals currently convicted for an offense that is not a strike, were convicted of committing multiple serious or violent offenses on the same day, and some that committed strikeable offenses as a juvenile.

Inmate health care costs are significant to the cost of housing inmates. In fiscal year 2007-08, $529 million was incurred for contracted services by specialty health care providers. Additionally:
– 30 percent of the inmates receiving such care cost more than $427 million.

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While stresses on the prison system in California are particularly acute, they are not untypical. Three Strikes laws have been a failure across the US, and still exist in the 24 states that enacted them in the mid-nineties.