Ok, comrade, I'm going to type real slow so that you can read this. You're assuming that EVERYONE that is taken off the welfare roll is going to end up in prison. Are YOU suggesting that every poor person is a theif, rapist, or worse? I don't believe that if you took 100 people off public assistance that you'd have anywhere close to 100 ending up in prison. At any rate, if TWO of those people don't end up in the pokey, and I have 1 person to watch them, I'm still money ahead (I'm only paying for 99 people at that point instead of 100). Get it? Your first link in that post is an article from a brit that has absolutely NO numbers to show that prison costs exceed welfare costs. The only thing remotely relevant is that as welfare spending increases, so does the prison population. Your second link is a pdf from ODJFS. An interesting paragraph: "The department’s State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2006 budget of more than $17.1 billion represents the largest budget of any “State of Ohio” agency. About 62 percent of funding comes from the federal government." It seems to say that in Ohio we spend MORE on welfare than we do on prisons. You're 0 for 2. Show me some numbers that clearly illustrate your point that "welfare is cheaper than prison"