The United States currently has 7.2 million people in prisons, jails, on probation or on parole. Of the 7.2 million, 2.3 million were incarcerated. The percentage of incracerated people in the United States compared to total population is the highest in the world. On top of this, it is estimated that each prisoner in the United States costs on average $23,876 a year. This comes out to $65.41 per prisoner each day and over 60 billion dollars spent on corrections each year.
  The solution to this problem is simple, get the prisoners working. Because it costs the same amount to house and feed these people as most Americans make each year, they should work for their expenses as well. Prisoners should clean the side of highways handcuffed together to assure they do not get away. They should also set up recycling facilities in prisons for inmates to sort plastics, metals...etc. There are countless ways in which the incarcerated can sustain themselves and save the tax payers money.
  On top of cutting costs by putting prisoners to work, we should also decriminalize drugs such as marijuana and other drugs which would keep thousands of people out of jail each year. By making small changes we could save literally tens of billions of dollars.
  Below is a link to Wikipedia in which you are able to see the high costs of criminal justice, as well as the increase in federal prisoners over the past years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States