Canada’s Prison Budget Revealed
As reported by the Edmonton Sun:
Documents obtained through Access to Information reveal how Corrections Service Canada manages its annual budget of $2.2 billion to care for its 14,500 inmates.In the 2007-08 financial year, the department spent over $322,000 on dentures, $162,000 on prosthetic limbs, $256,000 on eyeglasses and almost $82,000 on hearing aids. The numbers do not include Atlantic Canada. A partial picture of the cost of prison dentistry reveals that, excluding B.C. and Atlantic Canada, taxpayers spend $2.2 million just filling cavities and cleaning prisoner’s teeth. But these numbers pale in comparison to the cost of food for Canada’s inmates, which is just over $25 million a year. The cost of household and sanitary supplies is over $8 million a year nationally.