The United States spends more on prisons than education every year. Even though crime rates have continually fallen since the 1970's, incarceration rates have increased a whopping 250%. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "If states were still spending on corrections what they spent in the mid-1980s, adjusted for inflation, they would have about $28 billion more each year that they could choose to spend on more productive investments." Crime alone cannot possibly be blamed for these staggering statistics, but state policies certainly can.