The State - News from Aug. 1, 1986

The state’s bulging prisons could hold 70,000 inmates and cost $2 billion a year to operate by 1990, James Gomez, chief deputy director of the Department of Corrections, told legislators in Sacramento. The Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations, at a hearing on the Corrections Department’s plans for the next five years, was also told that despite the state’s massive prison building program, prisons still will be at 140% of capacity in 1991. The 1986-87 budget to run the prisons is $1.2 billion, a 19.4% increase from last year. This year’s cost is $18,100 per inmate.