Henrichson, C. (2012). The price of prisons: how much incarceration costs taxpayers. Federal Sentencing Reporter25.1, 68-80. Many years of cumulative custody and escalating corrections are well documented and are familiar topics to both the public and bureaucrats. Over the past four decades, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the use of correctional facilities to fight crime. As a result, incarceration rates have increased, with state prison populations soaring by more than 700% since the 1970s. Currently, more than 1% of the general adult population is incarcerated in jail or prison nationwide. This surge has come at a colossal cost to taxpayers. Over the past two decades, states' correctional costs, including prison, parole and probation, have virtually quadrupled, making it the fastest-growing budget item behind Medicaid. While these numbers are troubling, what is not clearly understood is that in some cases, expenditures in correctional facilities represent only a small portion of the monetary commitment made by a state when sentencing an offender to prison. Exis...