STATE SPENDING: CONVICTS SUPPORTED MORE THAN STUDENTS

JEFFERSON CITY -- An analysis of the state's spending plans for the next fiscal year shows taxpayers will pay five times more to keep one adult convict behind bars than for each of the 893,241 children enrolled in public schools.

The per-capita cost for the 24,748 men and women locked up in Missouri's 30 adult prisons will reach $16,693.18, while the per-student expenditure for local school aid by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be $3,104.78 in the fiscal 12-month period that begins July 1.

Expenditures for each prisoner will be much greater than the $6,561.81 per student cost on the four campuses of the University of Missouri system at Columbia, Rolla, Kansas City and St. Louis.

Per-prisoner costs will be $6,017.41 greater than the state will spend for its most expensive program, Medicaid, which has 322,235 enrollees and which makes up some 22 percent of all state expenditures. The per-capita cost for Medicaid is $10,675.77 a year, with 64 percent of this amount being paid by the federal government.

The other major corrections program -- Probation and Parole -- has a per-capita $1,424.52 expenditure, an amount that is more than four times greater than is spent for each person enrolled in the Department of Mental Health's alcoholism and drug abuse program. That per-capita cost is $3324.62 for each of the 211,996 served by the DMH's ADA division. There are 57,455 people under the supervision of the parole-probation section.

The cost of each parolee and probationer is more than three times greater than the state spends per person in the Department of Social Services' Aid to the Blind program. These services are provided to some 3,529 sight-impaired Missourians at a cost of $413.55 per person.

Although programs such as the Aid to the Blind are funded 100 percent by federal funds and grants, many of the state's educational, correctional and rehabilitation services are funded almost completely by taxes and fees collected from Missouri residents. Programs receiving no federal assistance include foundation payments for support for local public schools, all operational costs of higher educational institutions, parole and probation services and just 1 percent from the federal government for operating costs of state adult prisons.