Ripe for Cutting: Prison Budgets
During the boom years of the 1990s, prison-construction spending was one of the fastest-growing line items in state budgets. But the recession has forced state elected officials to make more efficient use of incarceration, and in ways that were unthinkable a decade ago, according to a report released by the Justice Policy Institute last week. Regrettably, it’s business as usual in California.
According to the National Assn. of State Budget Officers, states expect a $40-billion revenue shortfall this coming fiscal year. Some $12.4 billion of that, or almost one-third, is California’s estimated budget deficit. The last time states had to make sizable budget cuts was in recessionary 1991, when they cut more than $7 billion, or less than one-fifth the reductions they face in the next fiscal year.
State prisons now consume a much larger share of tax dollars. It is costing states, counties and the federal government $40 billion to incarcerate 2 million inmates, up from $5 billion in 1978. One of every 14 general-fund dollars spent by states nationally in 2000 went to prisons.
Yet, several factors make prison budgets ripe for cutting this fiscal year. For one, the expansion of U.S. prison budgets during the past 20 years has been largely driven by an increase in nonviolent prisoners. Indeed, during that time, the percentage of state prisoners incarcerated for violent offenses actually declined from 57% to 48%. Specifically, from 1980 to 1997, the number of violent offenders going to prison doubled, the number of nonviolent offenders tripled and the number of drug offenders increased 11-fold. At the end of 2001, there were an estimated 1.2 million nonviolent offenders locked up, at a cost of more than $24 billion.
Furthermore, voters seem increasingly inclined to divert nonviolent offenders away from incarceration. In a survey, conducted by the national research firm of Belden Russonello & Stewart, 62% of respondents agreed that we need to change the laws so that fewer nonviolent crimes are punishable by prison terms. In a Field poll last December, Californians put prison-spending cuts at the top of their budget-cutting lists.
This shift in public attitude has translated into actual votes in Arizona and California. In 1996, 65% of Arizona voters approved Proposition 200, an initiative calling for the diversion of nonviolent drug-possession offenders from prison into treatment. The measure was supported by a phalanx of conservatives, including former U.S. Sen. Barry S. Goldwater. An analysis by the Arizona Supreme Court found that the new law is saving Arizona taxpayers nearly $7 million a year--and it’s working. Many more defendants are getting treatment under the law than they would have otherwise, and 62% of them have successfully complied with the terms of their treatment.
In 2000, three of five California voters approved Proposition 36, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, modeled in part after the Arizona initiative. The nonpartisan California legislative analyst’s office has estimated that the new law will result in an annual cost savings of between $100 million to $150 million and avoid an additional $500 million in prison-construction costs. Buoyed by the success of these two initiatives, the California Campaign for New Drug Policies is planning to place similar measures on the ballots in Florida, Michigan and Ohio this year.
In view of these emerging realities, many elected officials have revised their prison policies. Republican governors in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and Florida have all closed prisons to save money. Texas, which has the largest prison system in the country, has modified its parole practices, increasing inmate releases and creating alternative sanctions instead of sending minor violators back to prison. In doing so, they cut the number of returning parolees by 26% and reduced their prison population by nearly 8,000 inmates.
In Louisiana, the state with the highest incarceration rate in the country, Republican Gov. Mike Foster saved the state $60 million by promoting a modification of the state’s mandatory-sentencing law to give judges discretion in handing out terms. Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas and Iowa have all either followed suit, increased inmate releases and/or created alternative sanctions for parole violators. By adopting sentencing guidelines, North Carolina went from having the highest incarceration rate in the South to the second-lowest, and crime still fell in the state just like elsewhere.
Yet, California Gov. Gray Davis steadfastly refuses to consider even the most modest proposals to save money by handling nonviolent offenders in different ways. While cutting more than $900 million to education and $200 million to health and welfare, he has reduced the state’s corrections budget by a paltry $6 million. Worse, he’s pressing ahead with the construction of a new 5,000-inmate, $335-million prison at Delano at a time when the state’s prison population may be declining and when arrests, including violent ones, have flatlined out or decreased. The governor even announced a pay raise, amounting to an estimated $1 billion over five years, for California’s prison guards, whose union is one of his largest campaign contributors.
By contrast, the state’s Legislative Analyst Office has drawn up a list of 10 options for cutting the corrections budget that would lessen the sacrifices being asked of education and health care and not jeopardize public safety. For example, by eliminating post-release supervision for nonviolent, non-serious, non-drug-sale offenders with no prior record of violent or serious offenses, the state could save an estimated $99 million in fiscal year 2003. Giving inmates who fight fires more good time than inmates who peel potatoes would save another $15 million. Making shoplifting punishable by jail instead of prison would net another $25 million in savings. If these three options were adopted, the state could avoid cutting higher-education spending this year.
Republican and Democratic political leaders across the country are recognizing that certain offenders can be held accountable for their actions without breaking the bank through expensive incarceration. They are doing so with the support of their constituents and with the belief that the goal of the criminal-justice system ought to be to have fewer victims, not just more inmates. Why won’t California’s leaders follow suit?