This Is How Much More States Spend On Prisoners Than On Students

This Is How Much More States Spend On Prisoners Than On Students

Perhaps if states spent more money on educating students, they would not have to spend so much money keeping prisoners incarcerated.

New maps compiled by research engine FindTheBest show how much states spend on funding their average K-12 pupil, compared to what the average prisoner costs for state taxpayers. FindTheBest used research compiled in 2012 from the Vera Institute of Justice, which analyzed the full cost of prisons to taxypayers in 40 states, and 2010 - 2011 information from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which used federal, local and state data to glean its results.

As shown in the maps below, students clearly lose out, when one compares Vera and NCES data. Unfortunately, when other sets of data on the issue are compared -- like information from a Department of Justice report on prisoner costs and one from the National Education Association on education spending -- results have been similar.

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