Costly Confinement

All governments have limited resources, and all policy decisions have costs. Every dollar or peso a government spends on incarceration is a dollar or peso that cannot be spent on health care or policing or education.

As the Open Society Justice Initiative report Costly Confinement demonstrates, the costs of pretrial detention in Mexico are painfully high—for the state and its citizens in general, and for detainees and their families in particular.

Moreover, the true cost of pretrial detention is often hidden, because the state counts only the direct costs of housing and feeding pretrial detainees and overlooks indirect costs such as the lost productivity and reduced tax payments of pretrial detainees who could have continued working if they were released before trial.

Assessing the true costs of pretrial detention requires considering the social programs that could be funded with money that is currently being spent in locking up large numbers of people who pose little threat to society and who by law must be considered innocent.

When the full costs of pretrial detention in Mexico are calculated, it becomes clear that alternatives are needed.

A summary of this report is available for download in English, under the title Costly Confinement.

The full report is available for download in Spanish, under the title ¿Cuánto cuesta la prisión sin condena?