[xw3098]

Do you have a source for that? It seems like a problematic measure to use absolute dollars spent as it had to be normalized per capita and to cost of living.

In just officers per capita the US more or less middle of the pack.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

[diogenes4]

This site claims $129 billion: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

Sure, you can adjust per capita. I still think it's a fairly shocking statistic—we certainly don't get that value back except as a jobs program.

[otteromkram]

I got ~$80 billion from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (page 14):

https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/docu...

One caveat: That spend metric has a standard error of ~$2.6 trillion. With a T.

(See page 25 in same document for the error table.)