Government Estimates Costs of Incarceration vs. Supervised Release at about 7:1

Here, from the U.S. Courts website, is some food for thought for bail or probation in close cases:

In fiscal year 2007, it cost $24,922 to keep someone incarcerated in a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility for 12 months, and $22,871 to keep an inmate incarcerated in a community correction center.

For the same 12-month period ending September 30, 2007, it cost $3,621.64 for a federal offender to be supervised by probation officers.

Those figures translate in daily costs of $68.28 for a Bureau of Prisons facility, $62.66 for a community correction center, and $9.92 for supervised release.

For criminal defendants who had not yet been tried, the daily cost of pretrial detention services was $64.40 and the cost of supervision by pretrial services officers was $5.85.

Cost calculations were made by the Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Justice's Office of Federal Detention Trustee, and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.