Reuters reports: It’s been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 (£577,886) per prisoner annually.
The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.
By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.
No wonder the congress critters don’t want it closed, it pays way too much for what we get in return, the taxpayers that is. $150,000,000.00 a year, wow, that sure would retrain a lot of those people who don’t have a job today, giving them as well as the country a source of income/taxes. That saying has to be true, the inmates are in charge of the asylum.