NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — A new report by the Prison Policy Initiative tracks the largest budgets in the mass incarceration system for 2026, finding that a staggering $445 billion flows annually through policing, courts, corrections and immigration enforcement.
“Understanding more clearly who benefits and who pays can help re-orient budgets away from punishment and exclusion and toward public health and safety,” the PPI states.
The top five largest expenditures in the carceral system are: Policing, at $203.2 billion. Public corrections agencies (prisons, jails, probation), at $115.8 billion. Immigration policing and detention, at $54.3 billion. Criminal judicial/legal system, at $43.8 billion. Immigration policing (ICE, Border Patrol), at $41 billion.
Along with these costs are corrections facilities necessities such as construction, health care, food, utilities and private prisons, which total $29.5 billion. For the legal system, fines and court fees, commissary costs, civil asset forfeiture and bail fees add $27.65 billion. In this category, the direct cost to individuals and families totals $27.7 billion.
Altogether, the annual total for funding the mass incarceration system is $445 billion.
“Our goal with this report is to give the ‘big picture’ view of the economic incentives that help shape the criminal legal system, by identifying some of the key stakeholders and quantifying their ‘stake’ in the status quo,” states the PPI.
Other discoveries by the initiative include spending for policing having grown faster than other parts of the system, totaling 25% of all government spending on the criminal justice system.
Additionally, almost 50% of the money spent on correctional systems goes toward paying staff. As a result, these employers and employees create a strong lobby against prison reform and retain employment even when prison populations decrease.
Furthermore, for legal counsel to be provided to individuals who cannot afford representation, the government only spends $7.9 billion toward this constitutionally mandated right.
The PPI compares this newest report to data accrued in 2017, tracking what has changed over time.
“Public funding for the criminal legal system has increased in recent years, even as the number of people involved in the system has declined, reflecting changes in priorities as well as economic factors like inflation,” they state.
The PPI found that spending on policing increased by 40%, from $145 billion in 2017 to $203 billion in 2025. Two-thirds of this increase went toward state and local policing budgets.
The initiative compares this steep increase in police funding to spending for public libraries, which only grew 22% in the same time frame, not even maintaining the rate of inflation from 2017 to 2025 at 31.5%.
It was also discovered that the fastest-growing public expense went toward federal immigration-related policing and detention, with a 60% increase in 2025. Spending in this sector makes up 13% of all government expenses in the criminal legal system.
Corrections spending, which includes jail, prison, probation and parole systems, increased by 27% from 2017 to 2025, despite correctional populations shrinking by 15% in this same time frame.
“Even as prison and jail populations have dropped, correctional payrolls continue to swell; agencies rely on overtime to meet staffing requirements and offer increasingly generous pay in vain attempts to relieve chronic understaffing,” the PPI states.
However, in another article by the PPI, chronic understaffing is determined to be an “untreatable symptom of mass incarceration — not a recruitment problem.”
The article goes on to explain that when correctional facilities lack workers, conditions in these facilities decline extensively for both incarcerated individuals and employees: access to services becomes limited, people become stuck in ‘lockdown’ conditions, and fights break out.
Additionally, overcrowding and transfers increase violence and the spread of infectious diseases. Lockdowns contribute to deteriorating mental health in incarcerated individuals, raising suicide risk. Insufficient staffing for medical and social workers increases this risk. As a result, staff members themselves become witnesses to greater trauma and violence.
The article cites a job posting for a correction officer position in Georgia, which advises applicants they must “be prepared to work nights, weekends, and holidays; be exposed to violence and disease; strip search people; and kill them ‘if necessary.'”
“Decarceration should seem like the obvious way to break the cycle, but it’s readily dismissed by corrections leaders whose livelihoods depend on mass incarceration,” the initiative explains.
Decarceration includes the increased use of parole, the ending of cash bail and other interventions meant to rehabilitate and remove people from the carceral system, as well as prevent more people from going in. Focusing on decarceration would provide a solution to the chronic understaffing issue facing correctional facilities.
In regard to criminal judicial and legal expenditures from 2017 to 2025, the PPI found a 32% increase for both prosecution and defense. Prosecution receives greater funding than defense, though increased funding for indigent defense — the right for a person accused of a crime to receive legal counsel — has lessened the disparity for some states.
Ultimately, the PPI publishes reports like this yearly to understand which stakeholders may be more resistant to reform. They admit that some costs were not tracked because they are relatively small in the big picture or unknowable.
Some stakeholders in this mass incarceration system include commissary vendors and telecommunications companies, which bring in $5.6 billion yearly. Correctional health care providers also make up a large portion of the money flow. Another substantial stakeholder is bail bond companies, which collect $1.65 billion from people accused of crimes and their families.
In regard to the bail bond industry, the PPI states, “[They] actively work to block or rollback reforms that threaten profits, even though reforms have been shown to reduce wealth-based pretrial detention while maintaining public safety.”
A PPI article goes into further depth regarding pretrial detention and its unfairness for individuals who lack the resources to post bail.
The PPI found that about 83% of people in jail and awaiting trial are legally innocent but cannot afford bail. Research shows that pretrial detention can have negative effects on an individual’s employment, financial stability, housing and family well-being.
Pretrial jail reform benefits other factors of public safety, for instance health concerns. Individuals who receive care at home or experience difficulty receiving care in a jail cell are able to continue to receive a standard of care. Additionally, jailed individuals and community members are spared the risks of transmissible diseases from “jail churn,” the flow of people with short jail stints before returning home. Tuberculosis rates in jail, for example, are 10 times higher than the national average.
The article cites real-world examples, such as in San Francisco, California. A 2016 project called the “San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project” used a risk assessment tool to determine the necessity of pretrial jailing. The project also offered alternatives to fines and dismissal of charges for first-time misdemeanor offenders who complete treatment programs. In 2020, the district attorney renounced cash bail entirely, but in 2022, it was reinstated under a new district attorney in certain circumstances. When cash bail was eliminated, the violent crime rate fell by over 15%.
As a result of the project, the jail population was reduced by 47%. Alongside the benefits for individuals awaiting trial, this greatly improves the understaffing issues mentioned earlier in the 2026 incarceration funding report.
Ultimately, the PPI determines that reports like this are crucial for better understanding the criminal legal system and determining where reform is needed.
“When crime is near record lows and federal policymakers seek to criminalize large numbers of people, we need a far more expansive view of how our criminal legal system works, whom it hurts, and whom it really serves.”
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