ASKED how things are going at his agency, the state corrections director said, "The soaring inmate census has created a crisis here. We've been busting the budget continuously ... our prisons have been packed.”
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The quote comes not from Justin Jones of Oklahoma, but from the man who heads corrections in tiny Rhode Island. Regardless of size, states from coast to coast are faced with the same problem: How best to deal with prison populations that continue to swell, especially when money is tight?
In Oklahoma, the choice has been to spend just south of a million dollars to study the problem, and then do nothing. An independent audit conducted last year gave legislators more than 100 recommendations. As far as we can tell, about the only one followed up on by the Legislature was to fully fund the Department of Corrections for next fiscal year, instead of making the agency come back in nine or 10 months to ask for a supplemental appropriation.
Auditors suggested removing our governor from routine paroles, which would save the state millions and free up prison bed space. That idea had been floated more than once by the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission. Lawmakers recently moved to abolish that group, which gives us some sense of how far the auditor's parole idea is going to go.
Not every state is standing pat. The Washington Post reported last week on a number of states that have implemented or are considering plans aimed at easing prison crowding and saving money.
In California, which faces a possible $20 billion budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested letting roughly 22,000 nonviolent inmates out of prison 20 months earlier than scheduled. Kentucky lawmakers are making it easier for nonviolent inmates to earn good-behavior credit, and letting them serve up to six months of their sentences at home. Rhode Island has expanded its "good time” early release rules. Mississippi recently signed two laws to reduce crowding, including one that lets nonviolent offenders go free after serving one-fourth of their sentence.
These and other plans draw their share of opposition, from law enforcement and victims groups. But the Post noted that many states, pinched for cash, are looking to corrections as a way to cut costs. The newspaper cited a Pew Center on the States report that showed between 1987 and 2007, states increased spending on corrections by 127 percent, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
In Oklahoma, the Department of Corrections budget grew from $143 million in fiscal year 1990 to $477 million last year, an increase of 234 percent. In that time, the prison population expanded from about 12,500 in 1990 to nearly 25,000. Auditors of the Oklahoma system, citing projections that showed Oklahoma's inmate population could approach 29,000 in eight years, said DOC "must either expand its present capacity ... or implement other program alternatives that will slow the projected growth.”
In other words, something's got to give, because this problem isn't going away.
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