Over the last week or so, and in the wake of the riots the prison population has increased by a few thousand. Also last week A level results came out and applicants learnt if they were successful and are going to university. The number of British students has not increased; the government has capped the number of British students. The government also of course have a large deficit, the gap between tax income and government spending. Clearly there are many issues here. I don’t want to comment on them here, but I can do some simple maths. And the maths is very simple, prison is very expensive, a lot more expensive than a university education.

There seem to be varying figures for the total cost of jailing one person for one year.  One of the lower, and apparently better researched figures, is £24,000 per inmate per year. Next year (2012 entry) fees will be £9,000 per year, and the maximum living cost loan will presumably be at little less than £6,000 (allowing for inflation).

Clearly, a university education plus the government’s estimate of a student’s living costs is cheaper than prison. I am not going to look up the stats to prove this but I think it is clear that the average graduate salary is higher than the average ex-prisoner’s, so graduates pay more taxes than ex-prisoners.

Even from a purely economic viewpoint, more students and fewer prisoners would be good. It would reduce the deficit faster. This ignores the human cost of prison and the non-economic benefits of a university education, although I think neither should be ignored. As a University academic I am hardly impartial but I think the UK would be better off if it could spend less on prisons and more on education.