By Robert Walden and Thomas Dichter
October 11, 2014
In their last two debates, neither Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett nor Tom Wolf has spoken a word about mass incarceration. Yet the Department of Corrections is the third largest item in the state budget, costing more than $2 billion in 2014-15.
Pennsylvania has opened 20 new state prisons in the past 35 years. Next year the DOC is slated to open two more at a cost of $400 million, although opposition to continued prison growth is building across the national political spectrum. The two new prisons, both in Montgomery County, are to be named "Phoenix I and II." But given the economic, public safety, and moral disaster that mass incarceration has proven to be for Pennsylvania, the only thing rising from the ashes is the DOC budget.