Jim Higgins
Question:91 Mr. Higgins (Mayo) asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the average cost of keeping a prisoner in jail. [16045/99]
Written Answers. - Prisoner Costs.
The overall average annual cost of keeping an offender in custody is £53,400.
This figure is calculated by averaging out the current running costs of the prisons and places of detention against the average number of offenders over a certain period, in this case the year 1998. These running costs include certain items which are fixed no matter what the level of prisoners in custody, i.e. mainly officers' wages but also such items as lighting and heating. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that each increase by one in the prison population will result in increased expenditure of £53,400 per annum. Taking the fixed costs into account, the additional expenditure would be more in the region of £17,740. Neither, due to economies of scale, would there be a direct pro rata relationship with changes in the number of prisoners in other areas of expenditure such as overtime, education, work and training. The only area which would see such a relationship is the prisoners' gratuities subhead, expenditure on which is linked directly to the number of sentenced prisoners in custody.