Like PA, California will spend more on prisons

Today, we continue to look across the nation for trends in state budgets. Despite proposing deep cuts in education and social services, newly elected Gov. Jerry Brown is planning to increase spending on prisons by $200 million. From the LA Times:

One place where Gov. Jerry Brown is prepared to spend more is California's chronically overcrowded prisons: the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's budget would climb from $8.9 billion this year to $9.1 billion in the coming budget year under the new governor's plan.

Like California, Pennsylvania has been spending more and more on incarceration in recent years. Here is a little bit about state prison costs from a recent editorial in the Daily News:

Last year, the state increased spending on prisons by $137 million, pushing the total to about $2 billion. That's about 7 percent of the state budget, which is way too much. How do we get here? According to a 2008 report from the Pew Center on the States, Pennsylvania has the second-longest prison sentences in the country. Many of these are mandatory minimums for minor drug crimes, which has contributed to the prison population growing by 280 percent in about 30 years.

Many of the same factors are at play in California. What do you think? Are states spending too much on prisons? What are the alternatives?

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