Guantanamo Bay Blows Through $900,000 a Year Per Inmate

This week President Obama cited cost as one of the many reasons the close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay, which burns through $900,000 annually per inmate, has been in operation for 11 years.

The Pentagon released estimates that it spends $150 million annually to operate the prison. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per inmate.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

The high cost was just one reason Obama cited when he returned this week to an unfulfilled promise to close the prison and said he would try again. Obama also said that the prison, set up under his Republican predecessor George W. Bush and long the target of criticism by rights groups and foreign governments, is a stain on the reputation of the United States.