The pro-crime lobby puts out a lot of sucker-bait. Their prime sucker-bait is pretending that they just want to free "non-violent offenders". Or, if they're really showing contempt for their audience, the "innocent".
But more of the pro-crime lobby's sucker bait, especially when aimed at conservatives, is promising that taxes and government spending on prisons will go down. (Never mind that criminals committing crimes costs much more than locking them up. A single criminal case will eat up far more resources even without the cost of hospital bills for the victim.)
Except of course it doesn't. California voters were sold a bill of goods.
The cost of imprisoning each of California's 130,000 inmates is expected to reach a record $75,560 in the next year, enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer.
The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase.
The court orders raised the cost of keeping inmates in prison. And much of the rest of the cost comes from union jobs that aren't going anywhere, anyway.
Since 2015, California's per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10,000, or about 13 percent. New York is a distant second in overall costs at about $69,000.
California was sued for overcrowding, and to comply with a federal court-imposed population cap, the Brown administration now keeps most lower-level offenders in county jails instead of state prisons. Additionally, voters in 2014 reduced penalties for drug and property crimes and last fall approved the earlier releases.
Republican state Sen. Jim Nielsen said reformers falsely promised a "prison dividend" from savings related to the changes. Instead, there's now an uptick in many crimes and he's worried it will lead to an influx of new inmates that will cost more to house.
California is not alone. The Vera Institute of Justice, a New York City-based reform group, said California is one of 10 states that reduced its inmate population only to see prison spending rise.
But wait folks, you just need to free more criminals and decriminalize more crimes. When every city neighborhood is unlivable, then you'll see real savings. Just like in Detroit.
Real savings won't come unless the inmate population drops so low that the state can start closing prisons, said Drew Soderborg, a criminal justice analyst with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.
When all the prisons are closed, then the costs will be really low. Except somehow they still won't be. Governments promising to save you money is still the biggest sucker bait there is.