About the Report The Report, Part II: Review of the Re-Entry Process:

chapters and policy statements:
About the Report of the Re-Entry Council

Policy Statement 10, Research Highlight 3

The costs of providing health care to inmates are substantial. [1]  

Current national expenditures for health services for individuals housed in US prisons and jails are nearly six billion dollars per year. [2]   California alone spent nearly one billion dollars (about one-sixth of its total corrections budget) on health services for its 160,000 inmates in the 2002-03 fiscal year, nearly doubling its correctional health care costs from 1999. [3]   According to the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, violence is a public health problem, and as such the cost of proper health care is a necessary expense to prevent, detect, and treat serious illnesses among prisoners and to maintain a lawful and safe environment within correctional institutions and the nation at large. [4]   However, the "value added" of these substantial expenditures on correctional health care can be achieved only if the efforts of in-prison health care providers are sustained as individuals return to the community.

  1. Dr. Lambert King, Director, Department of Medicine, Queens Hospital Center, interview with author, March 5, 2004. back
  2. National Commission on Correctional Health Care, CorrectCare 17, no. 30 (2003). back
  3. Evan Halper, "Inmates' Medical Tab Nears $1Billion," Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2004. back
  4. Position statement of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (on Correctional Health Care and the Prevention of Violence). Available online at www.ncchc.org (accessed on August 10, 2004). back
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