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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

I thought "Wow, only $37,000 for a three-year sentence? I thought it cost more than that per year!" But apparently I was looking at California standards. Compare:

http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=MO average cost per inmate $16K to

http://nicic.gov/features/statestats/?State=CA average cost per inmate $45K.

At the extremes, New York pays $55K per prisoner and Montana just $11K. This is insane.

It looks like California should be looking at solving its budget problems by outsourcing its prisons to Montana. This would save approximately four billion dollars a year.

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I believe Schwarzenegger wants to do exactly that, but has been prevented by prison guard unions.

I don't care much for the jailers, but what about the families of inmates who might want to visit them? Will they be forced to travel out of state? Couldn't denying someone visitors be construed as cruel and unusual punishment?

You can probably subsidize the travel with part of the savings.

Won't happen.I think it would be horrible politically to offer vacations to families with members in jail, no matter how much was saved.

Good point! Theoretically, you could have Montana come and run a prison in California. Of course, that would never be allowed, for the same reasons that it costs so much to house prisoners in California now...

Denying someone visitors would be cruel and unusual punishment. Making visitors drive for two days (or fly for two hours) in order to visit, though, isn't.

Think about it this way: in the days before motorised transport, were prisoners always kept within easy travelling distance of their relatives? I think not, and it wasn't cruel-and-unusual then.

For practical purposes, though, Montana to California is a bit too far. But Nevada spends only $20K, and there's not much of Calfornia which isn't within a reasonable daytrip of somewhere in Nevada.

Mexico probably spends even less, though contracting prisons out to Mexico might cause genuine constitutional issues...

I recall there being some talk about taking over some closing prisons in Michigan in the last year or so.

They would save significantly less in Michigan so is that more of a capacity measure than cost savings?

They won an injunction against him in 2007, but the decision was reversed a year later by the CA court of appeals, which ruled that prisoner transfer is in fact legal [1]. The state has transferred about 8000 prisoners to other states to relieve overcrowding (or rather, the unconstitutional conditions which result from it) and courts have approved plans to transfer more [2]. However, the issue is due for review by the state Supreme Court [3].

1. http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6294791264839700...

2. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/13/local/la-me-prisons1...

3. http://www.rbg-law.com/prison-overcrowding-case-will-be-hear...

At the extremes, New York pays $55K per prisoner and Montana just $11K. This is insane.

Population density in Montana is 6.5 people per square mile - it's the 4th largest state, but ranks only 48th in population, with under 1m people. New York has a population density of 408 people/sqm. I imagine the price of land and salary differences account for most of the extra cost.

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