According to a study conducted by Pew, the amount of time that offenders spend behind bars has drastically increased in recent decades. In 2009, prisoners served “an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36 percent longer, than offenders released in 1990.” This new trend in the criminal justice system has its price: “prisoners released from incarceration in 2009 cost states $23,300 per offender–or a total of over $10 billion nationwide. More than half of that amount was for nonviolent offenders.”

From Think Progress.