AML / CFT: the cost of keeping a person in jail
The US Courts service has released information as to how much it costs to keep a person in jail and on home release. It's difficult to decide whether the price is too high or suspiciously low.
There are, of course, economies of scale. But even so, it is interesting to note that to keep a person in a US Federal Jail costs less, per day, than most cheap hotels and not a lot more than in a back-packer's hostel, despite the security, staffing levels and food that are provided in jail as well as gyms and distractions.
The annual cost of keeping someone imprisoned in a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in fiscal year 2010 was USD28,284.16.
The annual cost of probation supervision was $3,938.35. Those figures work out to a daily cost of $77.49 for incarceration of a convicted criminal, and USD10.79 for supervised release.
The daily cost of holding a criminal defendant in pretrial detention in FY 2010 (the 12-month period ending 30 September, 2010) was USD70.56 and the daily cost of pretrial supervision was USD6.62.
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