600,000+ people come home from prison every year. With a job and support, they have a chance to succeed.
The goal of “At What Cost?” is to expose the high financial and societal costs of incarceration, specifically reincarceration, and show the better economic and community return of investing in evidence-based reentry services and direct financial support for people returning from incarceration. These strategic policy investments have the power to reduce recidivism, strengthen communities, and stimulate the economy.
THE RETURN ON
INVESTMENT
Reducing
Recividism
Reentry and direct financial support work. Instead of spending billions on repeat incarceration, we should beinvesting in proven reentry solutions that provide housing, job training, and direct financial assistance to people returning home.
Strengthening communities
The biggest driver of recidivism, aside from the system itself, is the lack of access to basic resources after release. People can’t succeed without support for employment, housing, transportation, and food in their first critical months home. Public safety isn’t about locking people up—it’s about creating stability, opportunity, and economic security.
Stimulating the economy
Pew Research Center has suggested that if states could lower recidivism rates by just 10 percent, they could save an average of $635 million annually. We don’t need to spend billions keeping people trapped in cycles of incarceration. Instead, we can invest in proven, evidence-based solutions that promote economic growth.
Our Pillars of Change
Reducing
recidivism
of people released from prison are rearrested within five years—most for survival-related offenses.
after release, employed individuals were twice as likely to have avoided arrest as their unemployed counterparts.
2011 Justice Quarterly
Strengthening
Communities
The biggest driver of recidivism is lack of access to basic resources after release. People can’t succeed without support for employment, housing, transportation, and food in their first critical months home.
STIMULATING
THE ECONOMY
STIMULATING
THE ECONOMY
Stimulating
the Economy
- By lowering recidivism rates by just 10 percent, states could save an average of $635 million annually. ACLU
- Connecting 100 formerly incarcerated individuals to jobs would yield $1.9 million in additional wage tax contributions and $800,000 in additional sales tax revenue over the employee’s lifetime.
US Chamber of Commerce - One hundred fewer people reincarcerated would result in more than $5.2 million in annual cost savings to criminal justice agencies, including police, courts, corrections, and probation and parole.
US Chamber of Commerce - Employment of formerly incarcerated individuals contributing to 1,500 fewer people being reincarcerated would allow for the closure of a prison facility for an annual cost saving of more than $26 million.
US Chamber of Commerce
- A study by RAND suggests that for every $1 spent on prison education, $4-5 of recidivism costs are saved in the initial three years after release from prison.
(Princeton Legal Journal) - A study from Washington University in St. Louis estimates that the true cost of incarceration reaches nearly $1.2 trillion when factoring in lost wages, negative health outcomes, and the long-term impact on children of incarcerated parents.
Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, George Warren Brown School of Social Work
The Cost of Incarceration vs. Investment
School
$81 Billion
spent on incarceration could fund tuition-free community college nationwide.
We could send five people to Harvard University for the same price of incarcerating on person for a year in the state of Massachusetts.
Housing
$1.2 Trillion Per Year
Incarceration costs our communities over 1.2 trillion dollars per year. We could end homelessness in the U.S. for less.
$11,093 Per 6x9 Cell
The average 1BR apartment in California is $2,155 per month. The average price to share a 6x9 cell in a California prison is $11,093.
Vocational Training
8 people could receive CDL training for the same cost of incarcerating one person for a year in federal prison.
$2,550 in Reentry Assistance
We could provide 218 people with $2,550 in reentry assistance for the same price as incarcerating one person in New York State.
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