Use Cost Of Prisons To Fund Education - MA

Brilliant!!

Here is a cost-effective plan to fund Governor Patrick's proposal to make community colleges tuition free. Downsize jails and use a portion of the more than the $450 million spent annually to operate them to fund tuition. The average cost of incarcerating someone in a jail in Massachusetts averages more than $35,000 per person a year. Students pay approximately $3,500 a year to attend a Massachusetts community college.

The majority of men and women in the Commonwealth's jails are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. Their addiction has caused them to become involved with the criminal justice system.

A report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA) calculated that in 2002 the average cost for treatment of alcohol or other drug addiction in outpatient facilities was $1,433 per treatment and residential treatment cost $3,840 per admission. Rarely does one course of treatment for drug addiction succeed.

When we calculate the cost of five residential treatments and a year of rent and utilities, only then do we approximate the cost of a year in a Massachusetts jail. The difference is treatment and housing represents a formula that can break the cycle of addiction and incarceration.

This year, a National Institutes of Health study found "that society earns $7 in benefits for every $1 spent on addiction treatment." Researchers found that the average stay in treatment cost $1,600. For each person studied in a nine-month period, treatment yielded $7,500 in savings on crime and incarceration related costs and $3,400 in increased earnings.

Real Cost of Prisons