The High Cost of Making the Bad Guy Pay  By Tom Gomez  Until
2004, Colorado State prisoners were paid $2 a day for our labor,
roughly $40 a month. Since that time the Colorado State
Legislature, in an attempt to reduce the cost of incarceration
while it enacted more laws to lock up more people, for more
time, reduced the amount paid to prisoners to $0.62 a day,
roughly $13 a month. While the change has made prison conditions
harsher, it has done nothing to reduce the spiraling cost of
incarceration in Colorado. Despite the change the Department of
Corrections budget has grown every year since. Colorado now
spends more on prisons than it does on higher education, and
there is no end in sight. Last year the DOC population grew by
another 2% despite a falling crime rate. At a cost of $30,000 a
year for each prisoner it houses DOC is not likely to be able to
significantly reduce, or even offset, the high cost of
incarceration by such methods as raising the cost of phone time
or cutting back on food. Instead state