Go online and find the figures for your state’s current prison population and the costs associated with housing these inmates. If this information is not available online, check your college or public...

Go online and find the figures for your state’s current prison population and the costs associated with housing these inmates. If this information is not available online, check your college or public library for a recent copy of the corrections department’s annual report. As a last resort, you might contact a local representative of the state corrections department (from a nearby prison or probation and parole office) to see if he or she can provide you with this information. Are the figures easy to obtain? Is there a problem with using gross (aggregate) figures to calculate the per-inmate per-year cost? If you are able to obtain these figures, prepare a short paper (one page maximum) comparing these costs with your costs to attend college or university.