Good News For Taxpayers: Philadelphia's Prison Population On The Decline
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It makes both dollars and sense: a new study by the Pew Charitable Trust finds that Philadelphia taxpayers are benefiting from a drop in the city's massive prison population.
The city's prison population drop comes after decades of overcrowding, and the Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative study attributes it two things -- faster processing of those jailed for non-violent matters like parole violations, and fewer held in the prisons pre-trial. As a result, the prison population has gone from nearly 10,000 in early 2009 to just over 8000. Claire Shubik-Richards, a senior Pew associate who wrote the study, says this helps all taxpayers.
"Today, seven cents out of every taxpayer dollar goes to incarcerating people in Philadelphia. And with the decline in the jail population, for the first time in decades, the Philadelphia prison system budget has actually been able to shrink," Shubik-Richards says.
Those savings are about $10 million annually.
You can find the study here.
Reported by Mike Dunn, KYW Newsradio
