20 states that spend the most on prisons

As of 2010, the U.S. spent $80 billion on corrections expenditures at the federal, state and local levels, according to The Brookings Institute, the most recent and widely reported figure. Of that amount, $38.8 billion has fallen onto the taxpayers, according to a 2012 Vera Institute of Justice report. However, some states spend more on corrections and expenses than others, due to a variety of factors.

Click through to find out how much prison inmates are costing the 20 top-spending states.

Methodology: GOBankingRates sourced information from the U.S. Census Bureau data on state and local government finances. We then added up yearly expenditures for correction, and divided it by overall direct expenditure to find percentage spent. States were ranked by the percentage spent.

Please note photos are for illustrative purposes only.