chart on growth in prison population
Researchers of an analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts have found that state-funded costs of health care for prisoners soared between 2001 and 2008, the last year for which complete statistics are available. In the 44 states surveyed, authorities spent $6.5 billion on health care for prisoners. It's logical to assume costs have continued to rise. One means of reducing those costs for the states would be to enroll eligible prisoners in Medicaid.
The study concluded that spending increased in 42 of the 44 states studied. Median growth of 52 percent, but in 12 states, prison health expenditures at least 90 percent. Texas and Illinois experienced inflation-adjusted decreases in their prison healthcare costs.
The main reasons behind the rising costs? More prisoners thanks in part of mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and the unmitigated failure of the war on some drugs. A failure except for the prison industry, that is. Over the past four decades, the U.S. inmate population has risen by 677 percent, from 198,061 in 1971 to 1,538,854 in 2011. The other factor is the aging of that prison population. In 1999, only 43,000 prisoners were over age 55. Now, 121,000 are. Those older inmates with chronic diseases average two to three times that of the cost for other inmates, according to Pew.