More Spent Building Prisons Than Colleges Tripling Of Adults Behind Bars From 1980-‘94 Spurred Growth

More money is being spent in this country building prisons than building universities, according to an analysis of state and federal budget priorities released Sunday.

From 1987 to 1995 state government expenditures on prisons increased by 30 percent while spending on higher education fell by 18 percent, said the study, which was conducted by the Justice Policy Institute, a research and advocacy organization based in Washington.

Many states are rapidly expanding prison facilities while the size of their college-age population has remained static for several years.

The study found that in 1995, spending by states on prison construction increased by $926 million nationwide while building funds for higher education decreased by an almost equal amount.

“These findings prove that, in the funding battle between prisons and universities, prisons are consistently coming out on top,” said Vincent Schiraldi, director of the institute.

The report, by Schiraldi and TaraJen Ambrosio, argues that “prisons are not only costly and ineffective for most nonviolent offenders, they also siphon funding from vital programs such as higher education.” The report recommends a moratorium on new prison construction.

From 1980 to 1994, the number of adults in prison nationwide tripled from 320,000 to 992,000, according to the Justice Department. This increase in the corrections population and the accompanying growth in prison construction occurred in an era marked by high crime rates.

During this period lawmakers across the country enacted longer sentences for many crimes, including nonviolent drug offenses, and police increased the number of people they arrested for selling drugs, particularly during the crack epidemic of the late 1980s.

Over the same period, enrollment in institutions of higher education increased from 12 million to 14.7 million people, marking a 22 percent increase overall and a small but steady increase in the proportion of the college-age population that was enrolled, according to the Department of Education.

Taking construction spending as a measure of priorities, the Justice Policy Institute study noted that California has built 21 prisons since 1984 and only one new university.

Looking at overall budgets, the study found that both California and Florida state governments now spend more on their prison systems than on their public universities, while a decade ago higher education budgets were considerably larger than those for correctional institutions.