Washington state is spending close to $1 billion annually on its prison system, and the bill is growing even as the number of people behind bars continues to decline, raising urgent questions in Olympia about what the state is actually getting for its money.
In 2024, Washington spent an average of $75,576 to incarcerate one person for a full year, an 84% increase from 2019, when the same figure stood at $41,232. The jump represents one of the sharpest rises in corrections costs in the state’s recent history and has occurred during a period when the overall prison population has been shrinking rather than growing. At higher-security facilities, the annual cost per person can exceed $115,000. For elderly inmates or those with serious medical conditions, the figure can run at least three times higher, placing an outsized financial burden on a system already stretched thin.
