The burden that prisoners place on the public purse has grown more than 60 percent in the last five years.
According to the 2010 Annual Prison Report, which covers the period between July 1 to June 30, the daily cost of incarceration per inmate is $44.25 while the yearly cost is $16,151.36.
In 2007, the cost of incarceration was $27 per day or $9,855 per year to house and feed each inmate.
During that year, the prison housed a total of 2,556, the report shows. However, they were not all there for an entire year. By 2010, that number of inmates had dropped to 2,374 inmates, the majority of whom were on remand.
The average number of inmates between July 2009 to June 2010 was 1,306, according to the report.
