6-4-2010 National:
More prisoners are doing federal time than ever, but Congress isn’t allocating enough funds to pay for them. Prison officials and reformers say a rethink of the system is long overdue.
While cash-strapped states are responding to the nation’s economic crisis by looking for ways to reduce their prison populations, the federal prison system is heading in the opposite direction.
Last year, the 115 federal prisons added 7,000 inmates to their rolls, making a total of 211,000 inmates in federal facilities as of early June—and the figure is expected to grow. The number of federal criminal cases filed annually has increased from 69,575 in fiscal year 2005 to 76,655 in FY 2009.
To make matters more difficult, federal funding isn’t keeping up with the extra burden.
At a U.S. Sentencing Commission hearing in Washington, D.C. last week, U.S. Attorney for Atlanta Sally Quillian Yates said that federal facilities are currently operating at 34 per cent above capacity. And that, she warned, will have “real and detrimental consequences for the safety of prisoners and guards, effective prisoner reentry, and ultimately, public safety.”
The White House appears to have recognized the problem. President Barack Obama is seeking a $600 million increase in the prison system’s budget for next year. The proposal includes filling an additional 1,200 correctional staff positions and opening three new facilities.
But the question is whether a budget-conscious Congress will go along. The prison system already eats up $6.8 billion, making it the second-largest component of the Justice Department’s budget, just below the FBI.
What accounts for the rise in federal prison inmates?
While white-collar criminals like Bernard Madoff get a big share of news coverage, they constitute only a small minority of the federal prison population. Slightly over half of current federal prisoners (52 percent) are doing time for drug-related crimes. While the average sentence for drug trafficking has held steady in recent years (six to seven years), it is a key factor contributing to the pressure on federal prisons. Another factor is the government’s crackdown on immigration violators, who account for another 11 percent of federal prisoners. An additional eight percent are in for for violent crimes. Adding to the pressure, about 11 percent of federal prisoners require high-security facilities. ..For the remainder of this article.. Jessica Pupovac
June 4, 2010
The Crunch in Federal Prisons
May 18, 2010
Tougher laws keep sex offenders behind bars
5-18-2010 Utah:
SALT LAKE CITY — In 1983, when Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, then a state representative, pushed through a bill imposing tougher sex-offender laws, it was a different era.
"I was convinced at the time that society had not really looked at sexual abuse," Hillyard said. "There were things going on, even within families, that nobody dared talk about."
And while 1996 legislation, also proposed by Hillyard, eliminated mandatory minimum sentences and widened options for prosecutors and judges, Utah still has one of the country's toughest stances on sex crime — with the prison population to show for it.
That's why it's unlikely a program like the one upheld Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court to indefinitely hold the most dangerous sex offenders after their prison terms, will come to the state anytime soon.
The court held that the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, signed in 2006 by President George W. Bush, was a proper exercise of federal authority. The four men who challenged the law were held after serving prison terms from three to eight years for possession of child pornography or sexual abuse of a minor.
The law only affects federal inmates, although 20 states have similar civil commitment programs.
Hillyard said such a program would be too expensive in Utah. Indeed, officials are already struggling to house and treat the sex offenders who make up 30 percent of the state's prison population — well above the national average of 12 percent.
The number of sex offenders in the Utah State Prison jumped from 864 in 1996 to 1,967 in 2008. Meanwhile, prison funding remained static.
"Programs are spread thinner across a higher number of inmates," said Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Steve Gehrke. "That means some inmates end up waiting a while before they get into treatment programs. You have a small number of staff pressed to do more."
The prison's Diagnostic Unit, a wing where new inmates underwent a roughly 45-day pre-sentencing evaluation, closed last year for lack of funds. Now, though Gehrke says other methods provide much of the same information, offenders who could have received probation end up in prison instead.
Changes in state law in 1996 replaced mandatory minimum sentences for many sex crimes with indeterminate terms of six, 10 or 15 years to life. At the same time, many attempted sexual assaults became more-serious first-degree felonies, with the possibility of probation or prison sentences as short as three years.
That gave prosecutors more options, more ways to reach plea deals — even to first-degree felonies with maximum life sentences — without forcing victims on to the witness stand.
"Prosecutors wanted it but didn't dare ask for it" for fear of public outcry, Hillyard said.
According to Paul Boyden, director of the Utah Statewide Association of Prosecutors, those options have protected the public and led to fairer outcomes.
"When we got rid of mandatory minimums, the actual time spent in prison increased substantially," Boyden said. "Now when we have a dangerous criminal who shouldn't get out of prison, the Board of Pardons just doesn't release them."
Elements of Jessica's Law adopted in 2007 bumped sentencing guidelines higher with increased penalties for sex offenses against children, including a minimum of 25 years to life for rape, object rape and sodomy.
While the 1996 laws gave more flexibility to prosecutors, they have also sometimes created dilemmas for judges.
Last month, 4th District Judge Claudia Laycock wrestled with the case of an 18-year-old Springville man who pleaded guilty to attempted sodomy on a child, a first-degree felony, after originally being charged with sodomy, one of the crimes carrying a minimum punishment of 25 years to life.
The slightly built young man, who admitted to a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old boy in a Highland park, still faced at least three years to life in prison, while the judge also could impose a minimum term of six or 10 years. But even the most lenient sentence, which she chose, seemed to haunt Laycock.
"Because of your age and build, you will suffer a great deal in prison. I'm very aware of that," the judge said. "Frankly, I hope you survive prison. I think you're facing horrors you can't even imagine, and I'm very worried for your safety."
Laycock also noted the damage done to the victim and said if the man abuses anyone else after getting out of prison, "I will live to rue this day and this decision."
Jim Hatch, spokesman for the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, said that while the majority of sex offenders are released after a few years, a "handful" have been ordered to spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars. The makeup of the prison population does not affect when offenders are paroled, and if there is overcrowding, those who committed property and drug crimes will be released before sex offenders and other violent criminals, he said.
Hillyard says the state has come a long way toward better understanding offenders and doing more to help victims, but there is still room to improve.
"I think we're doing a fairly good job of convicting people. Where we're not doing a good job is treatment," he said. "I think we need to be a little more aggressive in weeding out those who are really sick, and lock them up forever to make sure they're not posing a danger."
Striking that balance between punishment and therapy is difficult when policymakers are driven by "emotion and anecdotes" to impose ever-tougher sanctions, says Kent Hart, director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"We're very reactive and when (a sensational crime) happens, we throw more people in prison," Hart said. "But that's not solving any problems."
He urges more emphasis on intervention and prevention by looking at the causes of sex crimes.
Hart also criticized increasingly strict laws placing more people on the state's sex-offender registry.
"We're driving these people underground to where they don't want to report, where they can't get jobs or housing," he said. "We're basically dooming these people to fail." ..Source.. Paul Koepp
August 11, 2009
At least 23 states spend less on prisons
8-11-2009 National:
A $1 billion cost-cutting plan announced last week by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) will translate into layoffs for more than a thousand state prison workers.
In Oregon, a voter-approved plan to hand longer prison sentences to those who commit property crimes was delayed by state lawmakers who said they could not pay for it.
Tennessee’s department of corrections has sought to save money by offering inmates less milk and meat in their daily meals.
And in Kansas — which has received national attention in recent years for shifting resources from locking up prisoners to rehabilitating them — the state eliminated 85 percent of the slots in its substance-abuse treatment program for inmates, citing budget constraints.
The national recession is taking its toll on what had been one of the fastest-growing areas of state government spending: prisons. Even though state corrections budgets have ballooned in the past two decades amid a surging U.S. prison population, at least 23 states slashed funding for prisons this year, according to a new survey by the nonpartisan Vera Institute of Justice, a research organization based in New York. Thirty-three states responded to the survey, paid for by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which also funds Stateline.org.
Six states — Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and Washington — cut funding for corrections by more than 10 percent from last year’s levels, according to the study. Kansas saw the biggest recorded decrease, spending 22 percent less than it did last year.
Corrections is the fifth-largest area of state spending after Medicaid, secondary education, higher education and transportation. State spending on prisons has swelled as the nation’s jail and prison population has climbed to 2.3 million people, or about one in every 100 adults. But grim budget realities are forcing state lawmakers’ hand.
According to the Vera survey, many states are wringing savings from their correctional systems by trying to reduce the huge operational costs of running prisons — including by laying off workers, freezing their wages or cutting services to inmates. They also are exploring new ways to reduce recidivism and achieve long-term savings, in some cases easing sanctions on “technical violators” who break conditions of their parole and frequently are sent back to prison. Some states, including Colorado and Oregon, are allowing more prisoners to reduce their prison sentences through “earned-time credits” for good behavior and other forms of early release.
Some of the cost-cutting moves — using videoconferencing to avoid physically transporting inmates for court appearances, for example, and cutting back on inmates’ meal offerings — have targeted the basics of daily prison life and reaped relatively modest savings. But other changes will save tens of millions of dollars and have not come without political fights.
According to Stateline.org’s annual review of states’ legislative sessions, at least seven states — Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Washington — this year decided to close prisons. In some states, those plans touched off resistance among prison unions and in hard-hit communities anxious about losing even more jobs.
New York’s prison workers’ union earlier this year accused the administration of Gov. David Paterson (D) of creating “the most dangerous conditions ever” for correctional officers by closing 10 prisons and packing inmates into other facilities. In Michigan, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to avoid closing some prisons — and laying off prison guards — by accepting inmates from California’s teeming system. Some state officials have backed the idea of housing detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Early releases also have caused alarm, particularly in California, where a federal panel of three judges last week ordered the state to free more than 40,000 inmates — or about 27 percent of its prison population — within the next two years to ease dangerous overcrowding. Attorney General Jerry Brown (D), who is widely expected to run for governor next year, attacked the decision and could appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The early release of thousands of inmates also is being considered in Illinois.
While some criminal justice advocates contend that early releases and other cost-cutting moves could endanger public safety, others say states have not gone far enough in cutting inmate numbers.
Some advocates say state lawmakers have avoided what they see as the “elephant in the room” — tough sentencing policies that have put many low-level offenders behind bars for longer and been a major factor behind the explosive growth in the nation’s prison population since the 1970s, when many of the laws were passed. The federal panel that ruled on California’s prison overcrowding cited sentencing laws as a factor behind the Golden State’s huge prison population.
While New York this year revised its drug sentencing laws to give judges more discretion to keep offenders out of jail, other high-profile sentencing changes in the states have been far more limited in their scope. Texas, for instance, eliminated life without parole for juveniles, a penalty that currently affects only seven inmates. New Mexico abolished capital punishment, but had only two men on death row when the bill was signed into law in March.
Washington state’s legislative session this year was “completely upside down in terms of criminal justice policy,” said state Rep. Roger Goodman (D), vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Goodman said lawmakers cut funding for the wrong programs — such as housing and other transitional services that can help ex-inmates stay out of trouble — and refused to make substantial changes to the sentencing policies that he said have put too many nonviolent and drug-addicted people in prison in the first place.
Goodman explained lawmakers’ distaste for making sentencing changes this way: “There aren’t enough political points to be gained by taking this issue on. There are political points to be gained by attacking it.”
While broad changes to criminal sentencing laws remain a tough sell issue in many state capitols, corrections officials are pushing other, less controversial changes to reduce prison populations. Many states have made sick or dying inmates eligible for early parole. Other states, including Florida and Tennessee, have invested more heavily in drug treatment courts and community supervision programs in the hopes of keeping offenders from returning to prison.
“Changing sentences is a very difficult thing to do. And so we’ve gone around it,” Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said during an annual summit of state legislators in Philadelphia last month. ..Source.. by John Gramlich, Stateline.org Staff Writer
June 22, 2009
CO- Prison spending still shackles state budget
6-22-2009 Colorado:
Until sentencing laws change, not much can be done
On June 3, Gov. Bill Ritter signed Senate Bill 228, repealing the statutory spending limitation (the Bird-Arveschoug Act) that held the annual increase in general fund spending in Colorado to 6 percent.
But before anyone gets all teary-eyed -- whether from joy or sorrow -- because the majority Democrats in the Legislature finally will have the budgetary flexibility to spend as they see fit, take a breath.
Recent history shows that prison spending in Colorado, and the sentencing polices that drive that spending, has been constraining state spending for decades, and will continue to do so into the near future.
In 1985, the Legislature doubled the maximum penalties in Colorado's presumptive sentencing range for all levels of felony crimes. The average sentence length quickly increased by two-thirds, and Colorado's inmate population more than doubled in the next five years.
It has more than doubled again since.
In an effort to keep pace with the capacity demands of such unprecedented growth in the prison population, successive legislatures and governors have taken Colorado taxpayers on an extreme prison spending spree that has pushed corrections spending from less than 3 percent to nearly 9 percent of general fund spending.
It is a simple formula, but a dramatic increase in spending for one item as a percentage of the state's general fund (prisons) necessarily means that other spending items (such as health care and higher education) have had to decrease as a percentage of general fund appropriation.
This year's Joint Budget Committee budget briefing notes that in the 16 years since Colorado lawmakers implemented the 6 percent spending limit, prison spending has grown "at a compound annual rate of 9.5 percent." If prison spending had actually been held to the 6 percent growth, then last year's Department of Corrections operating budget would have been around $430 million; instead it was nearly $677 million.
So the current opportunity cost of Colorado's extreme prison spending spree is a quarter billion dollars that could have been spent on health care and higher education.
This year's budget increased prison spending by around 3 percent, and while this is considerably less than the more than 9 percent increase originally requested by, it is likely not nearly enough to allow the Department of Corrections to keep pace with the ever growing prison population. Despite a recent slowing trend, projections still estimate thousands more inmates by 2012, which in turn demands many more millions in new prison spending.
Spending doesn't drive the prison population, rather the prison population drives state spending. So regardless of what lawmakers do with the prison budget next session, inmates will keep showing up at the door. The Legislature's ability to affect prison spending lies in its prerogative to write sentencing law and policy
The fact that the Democrat majority had to take the axe to general fund spending items such as higher education and health care this year had little to do with the 6-percent spending limitation and everything to do with fiscally irresponsible prison spending.
And until such time as Colorado lawmakers find the will to make meaningful sentencing law reforms, this will continue to be the case. ..Source.. by Mike Krause directs the Justice Policy Initiative at the Independence Institute.
