Jailhouse Blues

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Shrinking Prison Populations Yield Fewer Prisons

On the other hand, states such as Michigan are using alternative strategies to shrink prison populations. Michigan’s Department of Corrections is finding the state simply doesn’t need as many prison facilities and that there are ways to deal with offenders that are cheaper than keeping them in prison.

And those kinds of strategies couldn’t have come at a better time—because with budget cuts, Michigan needed to shut down even more prisons.

Michigan has closed 15 state prison facilities throughout the decade—probably the most of any state, according to John Cordell, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.

“We were able to absorb most of the staff that would have been put out on the street” as a result of the prison closures, Cordell said, simply by shuffling staff. But this year, with the amount of budget cuts the state faces, the department of corrections could see up to 1,000 layoffs, Cordell said. Officials hope layoffs will be closer to 500 though, he said.

But for places like Standish, a small town in northern Michigan where there’s a maximum security prison the state is preparing to close, the economic effect of the closure will be felt pretty hard. The prison is the small town’s largest employer.

Michigan’s unemployment rate is already at 15 percent. “That creates even greater pressures for us,” Cordell said.

The Standish community fought the prison locating there, Cordell said, but now it provides a pretty good neighbor.

Cordell predicts the small town of Standish could lose 300 or more good paying jobs when the prison closes this year.

“It is a significant economic hardship,” he said.

Including the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, Michigan will close eight prison facilities this year, five of them are prison camps. Closing the camps will end the department’s prison camp program altogether.

Closing the eight prison facilities will help the department of corrections meet a $120 million savings goal for the 2009-2010 fiscal year corrections budget and comes amidst the staggering situation of the Michigan state government, which is facing a $1.4 billion deficit next fiscal year, according to a Michigan Department of Corrections press release.

But as it turns out, Michigan is no stranger to shutting down prisons and dealing with budget pressures. “Budget considerations are always a driving force in corrections,” Cordell said. “We have had pretty significant budget issues since 2001-2002.”

But even with budget pressures, the state wouldn’t be in a position to shut down prisons if it weren’t for a shrinking prison population—something the state worked on with The Council of State Governments Justice Center.

“There’s no way to (close prisons) without a declining prison population,” Cordell said. “There’s no way we can purge prisoners into society.”

Together with the CSG Justice Center, the state was able to identify strategies to treat inmates more cheaply using alternative means instead of keeping them in jail for longer, Cordell said.

“CSG works to provide state policymakers with the information they need to make smart decisions. The CSG Justice Center is a prime example of the principle, ‘knowledge is power,’” said David Adkins, CEO and executive director of The Council of State Governments. “We’ve learned that when policymakers are committed to working together to enact sound public policy in the crime and sentencing arena, solutions can be found that make a state safer at a lower cost.”

Michigan together with the CSG Justice Center began looking at a corrections system that eats up $2 billion of general fund money every year, according to Cordell. “We were very good at warehousing prisoners. That’s fine. But we were missing the point to some degree. We need to provide an opportunity for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves and become better citizens,” Cordell said.

Since Michigan started down the road of rethinking the way the state does corrections, the prison population declined from 51,500 to 47,300, Cordell said.

The study, released this year by the CSG Justice Center, provided bullet points for the state to work on, Cordell said.

One of the recommendations was this: If prisoners could be released at their minimum sentence, then the state should be releasing them, according to Cordell. “That recommendation challenged us to look at our post- earliest release date prisoner population,” Cordell said.

And by that Cordell is referring to prisoners who actually serve more prison time than their minimum sentence. According to the CSG Justice Center, people released from prison in Michigan in 2007 on average served 127 percent of their court-imposed minimum sentence before they got out of prison and were placed under community supervision.

That was costing the state big bucks.

Based on an initial look, that meant 11,000 prisoners at the time were staying in prison past their minimum sentence, Cordell said.

But thanks to addressing that recommendation and by using other strategies in the corrections system, the state is now able to shrink the prisoner population.

“That’s part of the reason why we’re able to close eight facilities this year,” Cordell said.

—Mikel Chavers is associate editor of State News magazine.

The Corrections Crunch

Many states are reversing a decades-long trend and are cutting funding for corrections in a recession that’s hit virtually every state’s budget, according to a new Vera Institute of Justice report released late this summer. There’s a fiscal crisis in corrections, the report said.

21 states cut corrections spending this year. (That’s out of the 33 states that responded to Vera’s survey.)

5 states—Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana and Washington—made double-digit cuts to their corrections budgets.

Getting Creative

Many states are using strategies to reduce the number of formerly incarcerated people who get sent back to jail—that means states are reducing costs associated with recidivism.

2 states—Missouri and Arkansas—are developing technical violator centers to address people who violate the conditions of their release from prison—and hopefully reduce the number of people sent back to jail for technical violations.

Colorado’s Crime Prevention and Recidivism Reduction Package includes $160,000 in funding for community corrections discharge planning $1.2 million for a pre-release program for working with inmates who are within four months of getting out of prison.

Michigan’s efforts to help prisoners reintegrate into society after prison received a funding boost in the budget—the state provided $56.6 million for the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.

Missouri’s budget includes $3 million to expand a program providing community re-entry grants and another $900,000 for a St. Louis-based prisoner re-entry program.

Montana plans to use $1 million to add 33 beds to a special prison facility treating mentally ill, aging and disabled inmates who are getting ready to transition back into the community.

Making Cuts

States are:

Decreasing health services;
Reducing food services;
Eliminating pay increases, benefits and overtime pay for staff;
Laying off staff and implementing hiring freezes;
Eliminating, reducing or renegotiating programs;
Closing prisons or reducing prison beds; and
Delaying construction or expansion of new prison facilities.

At least 28 states reduced staff, instituted hiring freezes, cut staff salaries and benefits and stopped pay increases in corrections departments.

19 states are downsizing, eliminating or renegotiating contracts for prison programs and other programs in the department of corrections.

At least 20 states are shutting down prisons, cutting prison beds, stopping prison expansions or delaying the opening of new prisons.

Michigan will close 8 prison facilities this year, in addition to the three prison facilities it has already closed this year.

New York will close 3 minimum security prison camps and parts of 7 more prison facilities.

Alaska expects to save $700,000 by delaying prison system expansion.

Colorado delayed opening 1 new prison and delayed expanding another prison.

Click here for the full Vera report.

Source: Vera Institute of Justice report called, “The Fiscal Crisis in Corrections: Rethinking Policies and Practices.” Vera is a nonprofit organization for justice policy and practice with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York.

To learn more, visit Capitol Comments, CSG’s blog.

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State News Magazine: The Cou is

Nov/Dec 2009

Jailhouse Blues

< Prev 1 | 2

Shrinking Prison Populations Yield Fewer Prisons

And those kinds of strategies couldn’t have come at a better time—because with budget cuts, Michigan needed to shut down even more prisons.

Michigan has closed 15 state prison facilities throughout the decade—probably the most of any state, according to John Cordell, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.

But for places like Standish, a small town in northern Michigan where there’s a maximum security prison the state is preparing to close, the economic effect of the closure will be felt pretty hard. The prison is the small town’s largest employer.

Michigan’s unemployment rate is already at 15 percent. “That creates even greater pressures for us,” Cordell said.

The Standish community fought the prison locating there, Cordell said, but now it provides a pretty good neighbor.

Cordell predicts the small town of Standish could lose 300 or more good paying jobs when the prison closes this year.

“It is a significant economic hardship,” he said.

Including the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, Michigan will close eight prison facilities this year, five of them are prison camps. Closing the camps will end the department’s prison camp program altogether.

But as it turns out, Michigan is no stranger to shutting down prisons and dealing with budget pressures. “Budget considerations are always a driving force in corrections,” Cordell said. “We have had pretty significant budget issues since 2001-2002.”

But even with budget pressures, the state wouldn’t be in a position to shut down prisons if it weren’t for a shrinking prison population—something the state worked on with The Council of State Governments Justice Center.

“There’s no way to (close prisons) without a declining prison population,” Cordell said. “There’s no way we can purge prisoners into society.”

Together with the CSG Justice Center, the state was able to identify strategies to treat inmates more cheaply using alternative means instead of keeping them in jail for longer, Cordell said.

Since Michigan started down the road of rethinking the way the state does corrections, the prison population declined from 51,500 to 47,300, Cordell said.

The study, released this year by the CSG Justice Center, provided bullet points for the state to work on, Cordell said.

One of the recommendations was this: If prisoners could be released at their minimum sentence, then the state should be releasing them, according to Cordell. “That recommendation challenged us to look at our post- earliest release date prisoner population,” Cordell said.

That was costing the state big bucks.

Based on an initial look, that meant 11,000 prisoners at the time were staying in prison past their minimum sentence, Cordell said.

But thanks to addressing that recommendation and by using other strategies in the corrections system, the state is now able to shrink the prisoner population.

“That’s part of the reason why we’re able to close eight facilities this year,” Cordell said.

—Mikel Chavers is associate editor of State News magazine.

The Corrections Crunch

Many states are reversing a decades-long trend and are cutting funding for corrections in a recession that’s hit virtually every state’s budget, according to a new Vera Institute of Justice report released late this summer. There’s a fiscal crisis in corrections, the report said.

21 states cut corrections spending this year. (That’s out of the 33 states that responded to Vera’s survey.)

5 states—Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana and Washington—made double-digit cuts to their corrections budgets.

Getting Creative

Many states are using strategies to reduce the number of formerly incarcerated people who get sent back to jail—that means states are reducing costs associated with recidivism.

2 states—Missouri and Arkansas—are developing technical violator centers to address people who violate the conditions of their release from prison—and hopefully reduce the number of people sent back to jail for technical violations.

Colorado’s Crime Prevention and Recidivism Reduction Package includes $160,000 in funding for community corrections discharge planning $1.2 million for a pre-release program for working with inmates who are within four months of getting out of prison.

Michigan’s efforts to help prisoners reintegrate into society after prison received a funding boost in the budget—the state provided $56.6 million for the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.

Missouri’s budget includes $3 million to expand a program providing community re-entry grants and another $900,000 for a St. Louis-based prisoner re-entry program.

Montana plans to use $1 million to add 33 beds to a special prison facility treating mentally ill, aging and disabled inmates who are getting ready to transition back into the community.

Making Cuts

States are:

Decreasing health services;

Reducing food services;

Eliminating pay increases, benefits and overtime pay for staff;

Laying off staff and implementing hiring freezes;

Eliminating, reducing or renegotiating programs;

Closing prisons or reducing prison beds; and

Delaying construction or expansion of new prison facilities.

At least 28 states reduced staff, instituted hiring freezes, cut staff salaries and benefits and stopped pay increases in corrections departments.

19 states are downsizing, eliminating or renegotiating contracts for prison programs and other programs in the department of corrections.

At least 20 states are shutting down prisons, cutting prison beds, stopping prison expansions or delaying the opening of new prisons.

Michigan will close 8 prison facilities this year, in addition to the three prison facilities it has already closed this year.

New York will close 3 minimum security prison camps and parts of 7 more prison facilities.

Alaska expects to save $700,000 by delaying prison system expansion.

Colorado delayed opening 1 new prison and delayed expanding another prison.

Source: Vera Institute of Justice report called, “The Fiscal Crisis in Corrections: Rethinking Policies and Practices.” Vera is a nonprofit organization for justice policy and practice with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York.

To learn more, visit Capitol Comments, CSG’s blog.

< Prev 1 | 2