Parole & Probation. Cosst of Crime THey are an eye opener.
About 7% of all jail inmates in 1996 were first offenders charged with a drug offense, and another 7% were recidivists with current and prior charges for drug offenses only. [i.e., No prior violent offenses.]
Assuming these numbers have held steady for the past 7 years, which may be a conservative estimate, releasing 14% of the NJ prison population would amount to 3,220 individuals who pose no real danger to others except in the fevered imaginations of the modern-day Carrie Nations. Assuming $30k per inmate per year, that comes to $96.6 million in savings. The problem then becomes firing the union prison guards.