New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer released a report this week that’s making troubling headlines about correction costs and inmate violence in city jails, which are both on the rise despite a historically small inmate population.
To wit, the annual cost of housing each inmate rose to more than $300,000 in the fiscal year that closed in June, up from about $117,000 a decade earlier. Over the same period, detainee assaults against staff rose by 258 percent. All this, even as the total inmate population plunged to its lowest in nearly four decades.
In a statement, Stringer lamented that while the city “is spending more money with more staff to guard fewer people . . . rates of violence and assault continue to rise, which is troubling for both our detained population and for correction officers. We have to do better.”
Bad public policy is to blame for blunting the impact of these public dollars. When it comes to jail violence, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s rules on punitive segregation, also known as solitary confinement, and use of force go a long way toward explaining why New Yorkers have been getting less bang for their correction buck.
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Rafael A. Mangual is a fellow and deputy director for legal policy at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post