Redivicism in California - 574 Words

California has one of the nation’s highest recidivism rates, which has been a well-known problem for many years. The rate has been steadily dropping. However it is still about 15% higher than the national average of 43.3% (McDonald, â€Å"California’s Recidivism Problem†). The recidivism problem in California is caused by rehabilitation programs not being effective enough to keep ex-convicts out of prison. Keeping prisoners in the California prison system is an enormous waste of taxpayer money. Instead of spending more and more on prisons, the money could be used elsewhere such as lowering college tuition for students. The government could easily save money for other purposes such as this by changing rehabilitation to make it more effective. In order to reduce spending on prisons and recidivism, prisons need to have better rehabilitation programs to make ex-convicts into productive members of society. Prisons are expensive facilities to operate. Each year, Califo rnia prisons house more than 100,000 inmates (Graves, â€Å"Fewer State Prisoners, Higher Cost Per Inmate†). While the number of inmates has been steadily decreasing, spending per inmate has skyrocketed to about $60,000 from $33,000 in 1995 (Dean, â€Å"CA Spending Per Inmate Rising Faster Than Spending Per Child†). That is about six billion dollars spent on prisoners alone. The government is wasting more and more taxpayer money on keeping inmates inside the prisons. With about 58% of ex-convicts returning to prison within