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Budget: $26.5 Billion for DOJ, a 3.5% Increase

By Jeralyn

President Obama's new budget includes $26.5 billion for DOJ, a 3.5% increase.

The budget includes $109 million for prisoner re-entry services, including $75 million under the Second Chance Act. It also includes money for drug courts. More details here (pdf).

But do we really need $1.2 billion in the effort to remove undocumented residents? From the Homeland Security Budget (pdf): [More...]

Funding of $368 million within existing Customs and Border Protection funds support 20,000 Border Patrol agents protecting nearly 6,000 miles of U.S. borders.

The Budget provides over $1.4 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement programs to ensure that illegal aliens who commit crimes are expeditiously identified and removed from the United States.

Funding of $110 million is provided to continue expansion of E-Verify, an electronic employment eligibility verification system. E-Verify helps U.S. employers comply with immigration law and ensures that U.S. jobs are available to U.S. citizens and those authorized to work in the United States.

And in another sign we are over-spending on prisons and incarceration:

Supports federal detention and incarceration Programs.

The Budget provides $6 billion for the Bureau of Prisons and $1.4 billion for the Office of the Detention Trustee to ensure that sentenced criminals and detainees are housed in facilities that are safe, humane, costefficient, and appropriately secure.

It's admirable that we are going to make prisons safer, but a better plan would be to incarcerate fewer people, particularly pre-trial detainees. How about releasing more of them on bond, particularly those charged with non-violent drug crimes?

$10 billion to fight immigrants and strenghten prisons versus $109 million for prisoner re-entry strikes me as imbalanced.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 28, 2009 (boomark / email).