WHAT DOES IT ALL COST?

Prison is hugely expensive. But how does it compare to alternative sentences?

	The Home Office spent roughly £2.3 billion on prisons in 2001-2002, compared to some £900 million on 'probation and criminal policy'.

	Some community sentences offer more intensive supervision than others. Probation hostels can offer high-level monitoring at 50-66% of the cost of prison. There are just over 100 hostels providing 2,200 places.

It costs a lot to send someone to prison for a year.

In itself that is not an argument for less use of prison. The health, education and personal social services all cost money and there is a strong case for greater spending. Yet because of the disadvantages of prison, we need to be aware of the costs and compare them with alternatives. Here are the rough costs.

Imprisonment

• Sending one person to prison for one year £37,500
• Sending one person to a young offenders' institution for one year £42,000

Community Punishment

• One year Community Rehabilitation Order £3,000
• One year Community Punishment Order £2,000
• One year Community Punishment and Rehab. £4000
• One year Drug Treatment and Testing Order £8,000
• Six month ISSP £6,000

The average annual unit cost of a prison place is more than twelve times as much as the cost of a Probation or community service order. Community punishment deals with nearly four times as many people as prisons, for only 40% of the cost. And there is little difference in the overall re-offending rates, although alternatives can be more effective.

What else could the money be spent on?

Sir David Ramsbotham, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, argued that if you removed from prison children, the elderly, the mentally ill, asylum seekers and those imprisoned for lesser offences such as shoplifting and personal drug use, the number of prisoners could be reduced by 20,000. Replacing 20,000 prison places with alternative sentences would save in the region of £690 million.

For that money, you could buy:

• 276 new, completley furnished primary schools (at £2.5 million each)
• 86 new, completely furnished secondary schools (at £8 million each)
• Just under 3 new hospitals (£250 million each)

Even a reduction in the prison population of 5% - around 3500 places - would save £120 million.

 

Does prison offer the best value for money? Would it be better to spend less on prisons and more on treatment centres? If we were to take some of the prisons budget and invest more in community sentences would they produce even better results? What would you rather spend the money on?

 

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