by Michael Dean Thompson

The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) has updated its Money of Mass Incarceration report, which had previously been released in 2017. The February 2026 report shows some striking growth in prison expenditures exceeding that of inflation, even as the actual number of incarcerated persons shrank along with the crime rate.

Their review of all parts of the criminal justice’s accounting reveals remarkable costs to the families of those incarcerated as well as to the American taxpayer. “Understanding more clearly who benefits and who pays can help reorient budgets away from punishment and exclusion and toward public health and safety,” the report says.

Mass incarceration results in an estimated $445 billion spent annually between policing, corrections, criminal judicial and legal costs, immigration policing and detention, and direct costs to families and individuals. Of those, policing grew fastest and now consumes up to 25% of all government spending on the criminal legal system when the Trump administration’s mass deportation is included. Yet, the $445 billion ignores categories for which totals do not achieve a minimum of $1 billion. There are also statistics that have definitional weaknesses, such as civil legal expenses in a criminal context, including asset forfeiture when property has a suspected connection to a crime.

A conflating factor in the report is that inflation was itself grew 31% between 2017 and the newest report. To address that, the report offers some adjusted numbers as well as a few graphical depictions. Even controlling for inflation, as an example, policing grew from an adjusted $190.4 billion per year to $203.2 billion. Immigration policing and detention more than doubled from an adjusted $26.3 billion to $54.3 billion. Conversely, actual spending for corrections grew only 27%, a bit less than inflation. But that fails to take into account that at the same time the number incarcerated shrank by 1 million people (15%), meaning the per capita cost of corrections rose much faster than inflation.

The report notes its key differences from two widely distributed BJS figures for corrections spending. The first is $89 billion, which accounts only for the costs of running jails, prisons, probation and parole. It does not include the rapidly rising costs of policing, court costs, or costs families must pay to support their loved ones. The much larger figure of $305 billion includes costs of federal, state, and local corrections as well as the entire police and court systems. Nevertheless, it fails to separate out the civil parts of the court systems as the report does, which inflates the BJS number. It also fails to consider the costs to families, which the BJS number doesn’t include.

Even as the PPI report number exceeds the BJS number, PPI recognizes some key values are missing in its report. The report does not account for the money transfer industry, prison banking or the release debit card industry. Neither do they include state and local contributions to corrections employee pensions because many systems do not separate out employees. Also missing are payouts from civil rights, personal injury, and employment claims, which are often drawn from centralized funds rather than the agency itself.

Just as PPI does not track the above expenditures, it also misses some forms of income from incarcerated persons and their friends or families. For example, many states receive kickbacks from phone/tablet providers and commissary companies. Dark money from private donations to criminal justice was also not included because more work is needed there. Dark money gives private donors outsized influence in police technologies and priorities.

Some data is not available at all, so PPI had to hazard a guess. For example, the last time food and utilities costs were collected by federal agencies was 2001. Likewise, healthcare costs were last collected in 2015. PPI chose to adjust for inflation using conservative numbers when possible. Their logic was that if actual costs were lower than the estimate, it would reflect a reduction in the amount or quality of services.

Among the many striking numbers, PPI estimates some $27.7 billion was paid into the system by carcerally-impacted people. Of that number, the U.S. Census Bureau measured revenue related to fines and fees in 2023 as $15.1 billion. This number includes fines, civil penalties, court fees, and court-ordered restitution. However, the Census number explicitly excludes civil asset forfeiture, library fines or penalties related to delinquent taxes. Much of this results in a criminal legal debt. The Fines and Fees Justice Center found the criminal legal debt in just 25 states was over $227.5 billion.

Taking $445 billion across the U.S. population gives more than a $1,000 cost per person in the country. However, the yoke is unequally borne, with much of it carried by carcerally-impacted families who are disproportionately poor. A 2015 report by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design found families paid an average of $13,607 each in court-related costs alone. That fails to account for commissary, phone, and other yearly, monthly, even daily costs incurred to support their loved ones, which were estimated across the country at another $10.2 billion in 2023 dollars.

Mass incarceration also costs families in lost incomes and opportunities that PPI estimates to be in the hundreds of billions, but were not included in the report. PPI estimates that civil asset forfeiture took an additional $5.3 billion in 2024 from carcerally-impacted persons to supplement police and prosecutor coffers,

The impressive report illustrates how even as the crime rate has fallen along with the number incarcerated, carceral expenditures continue to grow faster than inflation. Nevertheless, they recognize holes in their data and invite journalists and advocates to review and build on their data.  

Source: Prison Policy Initiative

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