Interesting look at the different federal prison security levels and their costs

Walter Pavlo has this interesting new commentary in Forbes looking at the federal prison system, headlined “The High Price Of Minimum Security Federal Prisoners.”  I recommend this piece in full, and here are excerpts: 

There are four security levels in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP); minimum, low, medium and high. High security prisons are identified as U.S. Penitentiaries that house some of the most dangerous criminals, many doing life sentences. The compounds housing these prisoners which make up over 18,000 (11.8%) of the prison population have double fenced razor wire, electrical charged fencing, perimeter patrols and secure cells. In short, they are expensive to operate.

At the other end of security spectrum are minimum security facilities that are commonly called “camps.” Most do not even have any fencing around them, have fewer staff to monitor the prisoners and routinely allow prisoners to go unsupervised into the community for work details. Camps house those who have less than 10 years remaining in their sentence, many far fewer, and their populations are prisoners that were that are serving time for crimes that were not violent (low level drug dealers and white collar offenders).

One would think that the cost of housing a prisoner at a high security facility would be far more than the average cost of housing a camper. However, a recently released statement from Donald Murphy of the BOP’s Office of Public Affairs states an increase in the average cost of housing minimum security prisoners that approaches the average cost of housing someone at a U.S. Penitentiary.

Of the BOP’s nearly 160,000 prisoners, 24,000 of them are minimum security. The BOP’s statement was that the average cost of housing a minimum security prisoner in 2024 is $151.02. The cost of housing someone in a U.S. Penitentiary is $164.87 (Lows were $129.72 and Mediums are $122.50). Since there are more minimum security prisoners than high, the total costs of housing minimum security prisoners far exceeds the costs of housing those in high security….

One place to cut cost is to look at those in prison camps to see if there is an alternative, such as home confinement or halfway houses, to move them out of costly institutions. However, the BOP has, as Director Peters has stated, a shortage of halfway house capacity across the country….

The BOP’s prisoner population has shrunk over the last 12 years from over 200,000 to around 160,000 today. However, the BOP’s current budget of $8.3 billion, continues to be the largest portion of expenditures in the Department of Justice. Sixty-eight percent of that budget is for staff salaries and benefits. However, some question how many people the BOP needs to run operations….

If prisoners move out of camps, it creates a cascade of prisoners to be moved from higher security prisons to lower ones. One key to moving prisoners is creating a place for them to go. Halfway houses are in short supply and an NBC investigative report found that many, mostly minimum security prisoners, are staying in institutional prisons longer than necessary because of problems the BOP has with implementing the First Step Act.