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The United States has approximately 5% of the world's population, but approximately 25% of the world's prisoners. In 2006, according to the Department of Justice, more than 7 million people in the U.S. were (a) in prison, (b) on probation, or (c) on parole.

The cost is absolutely staggering; no matter whose numbers you use. A conservative incarceration cost of $25,000 per inmate per year, given approximately 2.3 million prisoners, is an annual cost of $57.5 billion. Add in a host of other indirect costs (i.e. the related overall costs of crime to society) and the annual cost is, in all likelihood, in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

This situation is, literally, a ticking time-bomb no matter how you look at it.

The prisons are already over-crowded and there's no more money to build more prisons. The intense financial pressures of the current failing U.S. economy are likely to produce even more crime and we'll be throwing more and more people in jail. Instead of solving the problem, the pressure-cooker will simply get bigger and bigger.

It's a vicious cycle with no end in sight.

Maybe it's about time (if it's not already too late) to start thinking about how to actually reduce crime in the long run - and maybe we do that by making education a much bigger priority in all local, state, and federal budgets.

Maybe that's where we can get some productive and profitable results for everyone.

- Ed Smith, Publisher
The EHS Letter Manual