Incarceration

The Governor alerted us to this statistic at his press conference earlier this week.  Anguilla has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world.  The eighth edition of the World Prison Population List has been published.  It gives details of the number of prisoners held in 218 independent countries and Overseas Territories.  It shows the differences in the level of imprisonment in those countries.  It makes it possible for us to compare how many persons per hundred thousand each one of these countries makes a habit of incarcerating.  These are the highlights:

A little research reveals that in the USA in FY 2001, the average operating cost to incarcerate one inmate in the Federal Bureau of Prisons system was US$22,632.  That is more than it cost the US taxpayer to send the same person to college.  It has been estimated that in Pennsylvania the average prisoner cost the taxpayer US$33,615 a year.  For about US$18,000 he could have got a college education.  For about $25,000 he could be followed around on the street by a parole agent, one on one.  Are the comparisons likely to be any different for Anguilla?

In Britain in 2007 the estimated annual cost of imprisonment was 37,500 pounds sterling.  A family of five, I believe, could be kept on that sum.

Curiously, the death penalty is the most expensive punishment there is.  In the US, a recent study found that the median death penalty case costs US$1.26 million.  By comparison, non-death penalty cases (to end of incarceration) costs a mean of $740,000. 

Does anyone know what the figures are for the average operating cost to incarcerate one inmate in the Anguilla prison?  The cost of the prison service is in the Budget.  Anyone with a copy of the budget or the estimates should be able to tell us.  First, find out the number of prisoners in Anguilla at any given time this year, then take the average.  The result will be more or less accurate for the entire year.

Which makes us recall that it was the Quakers who promoted the warehousing of prisoners in penitentiaries as an alternative to corporal punishment.  They also believe that when you are attacked you should not attempt to defend yourself but should turn the other cheek.  So, who wants to be a Quaker?

Despite poverty, Islamic countries maintain a very low crime rate thanks to a variety of corporal punishments.  A man makes a habit of stealing?  Off with his hand!  Another makes a habit of raping?  Off with his penis!  What does it cost Yemen or Saudi Arabia?  One hour of one surgeon’s time?

I am reminded that this is a moment of severe economic crisis.  Hint, hint…