The Gitmo Price Tag

The Obama administration puts the cost of holding each of Guantanamo’s 171 prisoners at about $800,000 per year, or a total of $136 million taken from taxpayers’ pockets annually. That’s more than 30 times what it costs to keep an individual captive on U.S. soil.

The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg gives more details here on the costs and perks of being imprisoned or employed at Gitmo.

Mother Jones:

Just to put that in perspective, while each Gitmo detainee costs close to a million dollars per person annually, inmates in federal prisons cost about $25,000 per person. Even in our supposed age of austerity, with Republicans demanding cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and turning Medicare into a voucher plan, there’s always money to waste on an elaborate island prison for thirty times the cost it would take to lock people up here.

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Activists march in 2009 to show their support for shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison.