U.S. spending on prisons grew at three times rate of school spending: report
Source: Reuters
World | Thu Jul 7, 2016 7:05pm EDT
U.S. spending on prisons grew at three times rate of school spending: report
BY STEPHANIE KELLY
U.S. state and local spending on prisons and jails grew at three times the rate of spending on schools over the last 33 years as the number of Americans behind bars ballooned under a spate of harsh sentencing laws, a government report released Thursday said.
U.S. Secretary of Education John King said the report's stark numbers should make state and local governments reevaluate their spending priorities and channel more money toward education.
Between 1979 and 2012, state and local government expenditures grew by 107 percent to $534 billion from $258 billion for elementary and secondary education, while corrections spending rose by 324 percent to $71 billion from $17 billion, the U.S. Department of Education report found.
In that same period, the population of state and local corrections facilities surged more than four-fold to nearly 2.1 million from around 467,000, more than seven times the growth rate of the U.S. population overall. The prison population shot up following the widespread adoption of mandatory minimum sentence laws in the 1990s.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-education-funding-idUSKCN0ZN2L2
