Report: NYC spent $167,000 per inmate last year

August 23, 2013 Associated Press
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The cost of housing New York City’s inmates last year was $167,000 per inmate.

That’s according to the Independent Budget Office’s first-ever study of the city’s jails. More than 12,000 inmates were jailed on an average day.

The IBO says that the average annual cost per inmate covers additional expenses such as staff salaries, fringe benefits, facility maintenance and capital expenditures.

Michael Jacobson, the former president of the Vera Institute of Justice, told the New York Post that those were fixed costs that don’t change.

He says the number of inmates was about half of what it was in the early 1990s. The inmate population peaked at 21,000 in 1992.

The study also found that 57 percent of inmates were black, 33 percent Hispanic and 7 percent white.

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