The United States has a problem — a $40 billion problem. Our incarceration rate nears that of Soviet Russia at its peak, and we spend more on prisons than the Peruvian government has in its entire budget. And at that high cost, our prisoners are still being assaulted, hardened, released, and re-imprisoned. Like the oft-quoted infomercial cliché, there’s got to be a better way.
In an article published recently by Vox, Dylan Matthews claimed to have found the solution to the United States’ incarceration problem: replacing prison sentences with house arrest and GPS-enabled electronic monitoring. He argues that prisoners would still separated from society, and that evidence suggests separating inmates from each other would eliminate prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and decrease recidivism. These are encouraging results, surely, but how would this system affect the cost of incarceration? Would this begin to chip away at the $40 billion price tag?
At first glance, it appears switching from prisons to electronic monitoring would result in incredible savings. According to the VERA Institute of Justice, the current system costs $34,133 per prisoner each year. In comparison, the American Bar Association’s estimate for electronic monitoring – $3,650 – is miniscule.
However, what appears to be a nine-fold increase in cost efficiency is really just a faulty comparison. In prison, the state pays not only for security (the only expense that has been factored into the electronic monitoring pricing), but also for the prisoners’ basic necessities: shelter, food, and the like. Upon transition to electronic monitoring, it would be impractical and irresponsible for the government to just ignore these needs and the costs that come with them.
According to the most recent data available from the Department of Justice, 43 percent of inmates were not employed full-time prior to coming to jail, and 45 to 60 percent lived below the poverty line for individuals. Considering a house arrest system in which prisoners are not allowed to leave their home to go to work, these prisoners would have no way to support themselves. Cutting off impoverished people’s incomes would prevent them from being able to afford necessities. Here, the government must step in; forcing a prisoner to starve should not be an option.
So what would be the cost for the government to provide basic necessities to its prisoners? Ensuring they do not fall below the poverty line, the point at which many government welfare programs begin providing benefits, seems like a reasonable starting point. If the state were to fund every prisoner’s needs up to this point, it would cost $11,670 per prisoner per year, the poverty threshold for an individual in 2014. And on top of these benefit payouts, the government would also have to fund the bureaucracy to manage this new prisoner welfare system, which is of undefined cost.
But the costs of electronic monitoring do not end at welfare.
The Bar Association’s $3,650 cost estimate is constructed for the current house arrest system, which is largely comprised of white-collar criminals towards the end of their sentences. Under a more widespread electronic monitoring system, prisoners with more serious charges would also be included (though violent criminals would likely remain in prison for safety reasons). These more hardened criminals would require increased security; their larger charges give them more incentive to try to escape, and they are more likely to commit heinous crimes that require quicker responses from the police. This increased security, of course, comes at an additional, yet incalculable, cost on top of the $3,650 estimate.
Between the welfare and the current electronic monitoring system, the government would be spending at least $15,000 per prisoner per year, or 45 percent of the cost of keeping an inmate in prison. Adding on these additional costs — an increase in monitoring security and welfare bureaucracy — would drive the cost even higher.
Although in the end, the cost would likely still be lower than that of imprisonment, it is not the huge savings it appears to be at first glance.
Moreover, the shift may reduce incentives for policy makers to reduce the overall number of inmates and thus increase total costs. Prison overcrowding, prevalent throughout the United States, causes many convicts to get truncated prison sentences or no prison time at all, as a means of freeing up space for another offender. With imprisonment switched to an electronic monitoring system, physical space in prisons would no longer be a constraint. This may well make it more common for criminals to finish their sentence imprisoned in its entirety. With longer sentences, the state would be responsible for more prisoners at any given time. The result: higher costs.
Further increases in the number of prisoners could be caused by house arrest being a less effective deterrent against crime than prison is, or by abuse of the system, purposefully committing crimes to gain the associated welfare benefits (as is currently documented in the homeless population). Still, the number of prisoners could decrease because of the lower incidence of recidivism present in electronic monitoring systems.
With these competing forces, it is unclear whether the state would be responsible for more or fewer prisoners under an electronic monitoring system. And, if there were more prisoners, it is unclear whether the increase would be enough to counteract the decrease in cost for prisoner, perhaps leading to an overall increase in cost.
With a murky conclusion as to whether electronic monitoring saves money, one can turn to the other benefits provided by each system. Is the decreased prisoner-on-prisoner assault and recidivism worth the inequality of imprisonment conditions? People who committed the same crime could serve their sentence playing bridge on their porch in the Hamptons or desperately trying to keep warm in their overcrowded apartment in the Projects. Is it worth the lessening of the feeling of justice for the victim of the crime?
Unfortunately, these questions can’t be quantified. And what can be quantified, the cost, shows that an electronic monitoring system is not the incredibly cheap silver bullet it appears to be, so the assault, recidivism, and hardening may remain unsolved.