When Inmates Misbehave: The Costs of Discipline

Abstract

Reduction of infraction rates may serve as one measure of the efficacy of in-house treatment programs for psychologically disturbed inmates. To address the related issue of cost-effectiveness, the authors analyzed the costs of infractions at a medium-security prison, yielding an estimated average cost of $970 per infraction. These fixed costs do not respond to marginal changes in numbers of infractions but help to estimate the additional system costs that successful treatment may prevent in the long run. Like the costs of imprisonment in the free community, these costs need to be considered in disciplinary and treatment policies within prisons.