The relatively small (and large) cost of federal prisons

With thanks to Paul Caron for the tip, I checked out the interesting web site, Where Are My Taxes, where you can enter an amount paid in federal taxes and see where tax dollars go among dozens of federal agencies, departments, and programs. 

The first thing you discover is that the bulk of federal tax dollars go to the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of the Treasury, and the Social Security Administration.  Each of these departments receive at least 100 times more federal tax dollars than the entire (huge) federal prison system.  These data highlight why prison cost concerns will never impact the federal criminal justice system (as it does in the states as recently documented here and here).

But perhaps equally interesting and telling is relative criminal justice spending in the federal system.  According to the site, the federal government spends more than five times as much on prisons as it spends on a crime victims fund, and nearly 10 times as much on prisons as it spends on juvenile justice programs and violence against women prevention.  Our tax dollars at work.