California now has fewer prisoners, but it's somehow spending more money on them

The state of California spends about $64,000 to house a single prisoner for a year, and that price is on a steady climb. As recently as five years ago, the cost was $15,000 less — which is why despite criminal justice reform efforts intended to reduce prison populations and save California taxpayers billions, the price of incarceration is still climbing.

Since 2012, California has released about 30,000 inmates from its notoriously overcrowded facilities, but the corrections budget has yet to catch a break. A major factor is that prisons have yet to cut staff positions even though there are fewer prisoners to look after.

"Their numbers go up, not down. There is no way that could be justified," said state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R). "It was a deceit and a fraud to everybody that we were going to save money in corrections. We have not." Prison spending was supposed to decline by $1.5 billion by the 2015-2016 fiscal year.

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