State Spending on Corrections

At least 23 states spend less on prisons, By John Gramlich, August 11, 2009, Stateline.org: “A $1 billion cost-cutting plan announced last week by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) will translate into layoffs for more than a thousand state prison workers. In Oregon, a voter-approved plan to hand longer prison sentences to those who commit property crimes was delayed by state lawmakers who said they could not pay for it. Tennessee’s department of corrections has sought to save money by offering inmates less milk and meat in their daily meals. And in Kansas – which has received national attention in recent years for shifting resources from locking up prisoners to rehabilitating them – the state eliminated 85 percent of the slots in its substance-abuse treatment program for inmates, citing budget constraints…”