American Prisons
In the past twenty years there has been a substantial raise in people incarcerated in our American prisons. This has caused many problems for tax payers and those employees directly involved with the inmates of our prisons. The tax payers in Maryland have suffered a raise in sales tax from 5% to 6% and still many Maryland officials are trying to increase that again to 7% not to mention other tax increases that have happened in the past couple of years. Other states and counties have it much worse for instance in Chicago they have a 10.25% sales tax which is split between county (1.75%), state (6.25), city (1.25%), and regional transportation authority (1%). Another state California, which has highest amount of criminal cases in 2009, has recently increased their entire states tax by one percent in some counties this means they are paying 8.25% but in others counties they are paying 10.25% in state sales taxes alone. This increase in tax can be directly connected to the cost of keeping inmates in jail. One statistic shows that to keep a single person in jail it costs 63.51$ daily or 23,138.69$ annually, but the cost to tax payers doesn’t stop after their imprisonment. There are also parole officers to pay, who on average earn, 9.61$ daily or 3,506.53$ annually there are also many rehabilitation facilities that are government founded that cost 52.29$ daily or 19,087.94$ annually. This raise in taxes is not the only problem with our prison system there is also a mass overpopulation in many of our prisons. This overpopulation will cause a growth in prison employees and a growth in violent crimes committed by prisoners. These violent acts will extend the prisoners sentence and cause the tax payers many millions of dollars. This overpopulation has also many medical problems for those who are working inside of jails for instance there has been an increase in male inmates who are HIV positive from 2007 (17,958) to 2008 (18,615). This increase for many employees, at jails, is a constant threat on their personal health. Also they have to follow strict rules regarding these inmates some of these rules require specialized medical precautions that again costs the tax payers even more money.