Prison Costs

Federal medium security prisons opened between 1985 and 1990 cost more per bed to build than similar state prisons. They averaged $70,000 per bed compared with $55,000 per bed for the state prisons. The major reasons for the difference were that federal prisons were designed to provide 55 percent more space per inmate and federal designs called for inmates to be housed in single cells rather than multiple-occupancy cells or dormitories. Another reason was that federal prisons had more space devoted to inmate programs. However, these federal prisons cost less to operate per inmate per day than the state prisons, mainly as a result of salary differences. Once federal law enforcement pay reform goes into effect, however, differences between federal and state salaries should diminish and locality pay could make siting prisons in some geographic areas more costly. The Bureau of Prisons is considering ways to reduce construction costs, including allowing double-bunking in some new medium security prisons. However, GAO questions whether these proposals will address certain important opportunities that could substantially cut prison costs. These opportunities include reducing the amount of space provided to inmates, making greater use of multipurpose space, and siting prisons in lower cost geographic areas.

GAO found that: (1) federal medium-security prisons opened between 1985 and 1989 cost more per bed to build than similar state prisons; (2) such federal medium-security prisons cost more primarily because federal prisons were designed to provide 55 percent more space per inmate and federal designs called for inmates to be housed in single cells rather than multiple-occupancy cells or dormitories; (3) construction cost indexes indicate that construction costs vary across different regions of the country as a result of differences in labor and material costs; (4) although Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials stated that the most important factor in determining where to build prisons was proximity to inmates' homes, data show that over 60 percent of inmates were serving sentences more than 250 miles away from home and 35 percent are more than 500 miles from home; (5) new BOP guidelines call for half the cells to be double-bunked to house two-thirds of the inmates, which will reduce per-bed construction costs by increasing capacity relative to cell size; (6) options to decrease construction costs include increased use of inmate labor, reduced square footage in support areas, deleting gymnasiums, dental clinics, and x-ray facilities in adjacent minimum security camps, deleting certain indoor recreation areas, and using cubicles instead of cells to house inmates; and (7) federal prisons cost less to operate per inmate per day than state prisons, since personnel costs comprise the bulk of prison operations costs, and the two federal prisons reviewed generally pay lower salaries and use fewer staff relative to their inmate populations than the state prisons.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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