[Vision2020] Prison system

[Ron Force]

The December 21, 2005 Wall Street Journal had an article about what states
and the Fed are doing to drive down the cost of incarceration.

Course Corrections: To Cut Prison Bill, States Tweak Laws, Try Early
Releases; Cost Nears $35 Billion a Year, Driving Programs to Keep Prisoners
>From Returning; Some Over 65 Get Paroled
Gary Fields. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Dec 21,
2005. pg. A.1


They featured Connecticut:

"When Theresa Lantz took over as Connecticut's corrections commissioner in
early 2003, the state's prison and jail population had hit a high of 19,320
inmates. Prisons were so crowded that 500 state inmates were being housed in
Virginia -- at an annual cost of $12 million -- and an additional 2,000 were
about to be shipped.

Less than three years later, the state's prison and jail population is down
6.2%, and state inmates are all housed in Connecticut. Ms. Lantz credits a
state law that promoted the release of less-dangerous offenders -- for
example, by letting those accused of minor crimes stay home while awaiting
trial.

Connecticut is one of many states taking steps to reduce its prison
population. That has little to do with any change in tough-on-crime thinking
and a lot to do with dollars and cents. Housing criminals is expensive: The
average cost was $22,650 a year per person in 2001, the last year for which
figures are available.

Strict adherence to tough sentencing laws "became incredibly expensive
without necessarily enhancing public safety," says Ms. Lantz."
...
"Meanwhile, Federal Bureau of Investigation crime statistics show the
violent crime rate in Connecticut is also down. That suggests the people
being released aren't committing many new crimes, says Ms. Lantz. "It is a
philosophical and cultural shift" from the "confinement model which was to
lock people up their entire sentence," she says."

One factor is recidivism: prisonors who are released with no skills, job,
money or a place to live quickly return to prision. Sen. Sam Brownback of
Kansas (a conservative) is trying to fund a grant program to provide
counseling and assistance for a supervised re-entry program for convicts,
based on a pilot project in his home state. They also assist in getting
drivers' licenses before release, since ID is a basic requirement to
function in society.

"The initial results from the program are encouraging. Officials have
tracked a group of 29 of the state's highest-risk ex-convicts who took part
in the program when it first began in Shawnee County three years ago. The
recidivism rate is 13.7%, says Ms. Phelps, far better than the 80% that's
typical for such a group."

Some other practices include parole for older prisoners, since the crime
rate declines as people age. Critically ill prisoners may also be released
without much risk.

Back to Connecticut:

"Connecticut's experience shows that major statutes don't need to be tossed
out to reduce prison overcrowding.

Like many states, Connecticut has truth-in-sentencing laws that require
inmates to serve at least 85% of their sentence. A study commissioned by
state legislators found in 2003 that hundreds of inmates were serving more
than 85% of their sentences even when there was no compelling reason to hold
them longer. It projected that 850 prison beds could be freed up with a rule
change to get inmates out more quickly. This discovery and others prompted
tweaks that reduced crowding and allowed out-of-state inmates to be brought
home.

A major change was to reduce the number of people incarcerated for technical
violations of probation and parole. Those violations include flunking a drug
test or failing to appear before the parole officer. A law passed in 2004
mandated that the department develop a system to cut those violations by
20%. The state now allows offenders to remain free for violations such as
changing residence without permission.

The Legislature also allowed sentencing judges to divert some offenders into
treatment for alcohol and drug addictions instead of sending them away for
mandatory minimum sentences. And it gave the state corrections department --
which also runs local jails in Connecticut -- authority to release those
charged with less serious crimes while they are awaiting trial.

"You want to reserve prison beds and jail beds for those individuals who
constitute a threat to the public. You don't want somebody in a jail bed who
can be appropriately supervised in the community," says Ms. Lantz, the state
corrections commissioner."

The parole system could be used to reduce prison polulations, but:

"One of the simplest ways to reduce the prison population is parole. But at
the federal level, there is no parole for people sentenced after 1987. And
at the state level, parole is increasingly unpopular because officials don't
want to take the blame for releasing someone who later commits a crime as a
parolee."

The article points out that Alabama reduced its prison population 7.8%
(4,000 inmates) by setting up a special parole board to screen nonviolent
offenders, and increased the number of parole officers to handle the
increased caseload.

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Ron Force          Moscow ID USA
rforce at moscow.com
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