Now that money’s tight everywhere, it might be time for a look at the policies that put so many non-violent offenders behind bars for minor offenses. Prison costs $29,000 per year per inmate, and there’s no guarantee that locking up so many people is having the desired effect.

The numbers released by Pew are humbling. In the last 25 years alone prison and jail populations have grown 274 percent to 2.3 million people in 2008.

Keeping this many people locked up cost states $51.7 billion. For states having trouble keeping up with their budgets, a change in policies might be worth a review.

The real savings comes from not locking up people who aren’t a danger to others. The cost to manage an offender through probation is only $1,250.00 per year. Compared to the $29,000 it costs to keep them in jail, the huge amounts of money could be used for more productive measures.

“Among the many programs that are competing for scarce taxpayer dollars, there is one area of the state budget that could use some trimming, and that area is corrections,” said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, in a call with reporters. “The bottom line is that states are spending too much.”

In a clear example of how screwed up many state’s priorities have become, penitentiary spending is second only to Medicaid as a cost.

In Detroit, the Pew group found a neighborhood where 1 out of 7 of all adults had some sort of connection with a felony conviction. Gelb suggested that resources could be diverted from imprisonment and focused on the neighborhood instead.

“Violent and career criminals need to be locked up, and for a long time. But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable in the community at far lower cost,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Center’s Public Safety Performance Project, which produced the report.

The Pew report shows there are too many people in jail, and society isn’t reaping much of a dividend from incarcerating them.