WBFO's Thomas O'Neil-White reports. Ames Grawart is the Senior Counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School. He points to the hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars spent each year to maintain post-release supervision as an example wasteful spending. “At a simple, fiscal level, we know that it costs around $20,000 a year to incarcerate someone in New York State prisons,” he said. “By comparison, a year of parole supervision costs around $2,000.” Even though it is cheaper than prison, Grawert said whenever a parolee goes back to prison on a technical violation, that’s more money out of tax payer pockets.