Will Prop. 5 cost the taxpayers money?
Prop. 5 pays for itself. While it does require increased spending on programs, these costs are offset by reductions in prison and parolee populations. (It now costs taxpayers $46,000 to incarcerate one person for one year.) This makes Prop. 5 cost-neutral. The independent and nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) estimates, conservatively, that Prop. 5 will reduce the prison population by 18,000 and the parolee population by 22,000 which translates into one billion dollars in annual savings. The LAO also estimate that Prop. 5 will save $2.5 billion in prisons we will not need to build.
