Sentence Reforms Found Effective

After three decades of “get tough” prison policies in the U.S., a growing number of states have adopted sentencing reforms as alternatives to incarceration, according to two separate studies to be released today.

The reports by the Sentencing Project and the Justice Policy Institute--left-leaning research organizations based in Washington, D.C.--conclude that the trend toward reforms has been driven by a drop in crime, fiscal constraints and waning public support for imprisoning nonviolent felons.

“We are starting to see a reasonably substantial shift away from harsher sentencing,” said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project. “There is no question the trend is already in place. The only question is how substantial it will become . . . across the country.”

In its analysis of legislative proposals and fiscal actions around the U.S., the Sentencing Project found that in the last 18 months four states have scaled back mandatory sentencing laws, five states have expanded the role of drug treatment as an alternative to prison and seven states have passed other types of legislation to ease prison crowding.

Significantly, Mauer said, many of the states taking such initiatives--such as Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia--previously have been among the most conservative in their approach to public safety and prison sentencing.

One example of changing attitudes, Mauer said, is the proliferation of drug courts. Just a decade ago, he said, the first drug courts were opened in the U.S. to emphasize treatment over imprisonment for nonviolent drug offenders. Today, according to Mauer, more than 400 drug courts are operating throughout the country, including in California.

“It is a reform that has become very mainstream in a very brief period of time,” Mauer said.

While the Sentencing Project study examined a variety of reasons for prison sentencing reforms, the Justice Policy Institute focused on financial incentives.

“There is a new thing happening across the country,” Associate Director Jason Zeidenberg said. “It is bipartisan. It is cross-regional . . . [and] it is happening in legislatures and the executive branches.

“It is [the conclusion] that locking everyone up has a financial downside that people aren’t happy with and want changed.”

During the 1990s, the institute said, prisons nationwide constituted one of the fastest-growing line items in state budgets, accounting for about $1 of every $14 in general fund expenditures in fiscal 2000.

Today, the report adds, federal, state and county expenditures total nearly $40 billion annually to lock up about 2 million prisoners.

“In state after state, we found that politicians of both parties were proposing prudent cuts to prison populations and budgets,” said researcher Judith Greene, who co-wrote the report.

“The combination of the current fiscal crisis and increasing public support for reducing the use of incarceration has created a national trend in states moving toward a more balanced response to crime,” Greene said.

While both studies conclude that California’s Proposition 36 drug diversion program has helped keep nonviolent offenders out of prison, the institute’s report says the state has not done as much as many others to reduce prison costs.

Only last year, the institute noted, California’s Legislative Analyst office said the state could save almost $100 million a year through one action: eliminating post-release supervision for nonserious offenders who have no prior convictions for violent crimes or selling narcotics.

“It is significant that the biggest state in the nation is not getting in control of its corrections budget,” Zeidenberg said.

While the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks have prompted a number of tough anti-crime initiatives, officials familiar with the sentencing studies said they do not expect a reversal of the sentencing reforms taken by states.

“I think people make pretty clear distinctions between the kinds of cases we are talking about and national security issues,” Mauer said.