By Richard Jerome:

The size and cost of America’s prison system has skyrocketed during the last few decades, largely as a result of laws and policies that put more offenders behind bars and keep them there longer.  Yet recidivism rates remain stubbornly high, and crime still is a major public concern.  State policymakers across the nation are asking whether soaring prison budgets are the best path to public safety.  Increasingly, they are finding the answer is “No.”

Americans deserve criminal justice policies that keep them safe. They want serious, violent, and chronic criminals put in prison. At the same time, a majority of Americans support cost-effective strategies for dealing with offenders who pose less risk to the community.

Our Challenge

Three decades of growth in America’s prison population has quietly nudged the nation across a
sobering threshold: for the first time, more than one in every 100 adults is now confined to an American jail or prison. The number of people behind bars in the United States continued to climb in 2007, saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford, and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime.

For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling. While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. Gender adds another dimension to the picture. Men still are roughly 10 times more likely to be in jail or prison, but the female population is burgeoning at a far brisker pace. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate also has hit the 1-in-100 mark.

While the national incarceration trend remains on the rise, some states report a flattening of growth, or even a decline, figures from January 1 of this year show. Texas’ count dropped slightly over the previous year, but with California’s massive system dipping by 4,068 inmates, Texas has become the nation’s imprisonment leader. New York and Michigan, also among the country’s biggest systems, reported declines as well. There is reason to suspect those states may soon have lots of company.

Prison costs are blowing holes in state budgets but barely making a dent in recidivism rates. At the same time, policymakers are becoming increasingly aware of research-backed strategies for community corrections—better ways to identify which offenders need a prison cell and which can be safely handled in the community; new technologies to monitor their whereabouts and behavior; and more effective supervision and treatment programs to help them stay on the straight and narrow. Taken together, these trends are encouraging policy makers to diversify their states’ array of criminal sanctions with options for low-risk offenders that save tax dollars but still hold offenders accountable for their actions.

Policy Choices Drive Growth

In exploring such alternatives, lawmakers are learning that current prison growth is not driven primarily by a parallel increase in crime, or a corresponding surge in the population at large.
Rather, it flows principally from a wave of policy choices that are sending more lawbreakers to prison and, through popular “three-strikes” measures and other sentencing enhancements, keeping them there longer.

Overlaying that picture in some states has been the habitual use of prison stays to punish those who break rules governing their probation or parole. In California, for example, such violators make up a large proportion of prison admissions, churning in and out of badly overloaded facilities. Nationally, more than half of released offenders are back in prison within three years, either for a new crime or for violating the terms of their release.

Few doubt the necessity of locking up violent criminals and those who repeatedly threaten
community safety. And policy makers understandably are moved to act by especially
heinous crimes or victims seeking justice in the name of a loved one. Increasingly, however, states are discovering that casting such a wide net for prisoners creates a vexing fiscal burden—especially in lean times.

Finding enough dollars to house, feed and provide a doctor’s care to a low-risk inmate is a struggle besetting states from Arizona to Vermont. In the absence of tax hikes, lawmakers may find themselves forced to cut or limit other vital programs—from transportation to education and healthcare—to foot the incarceration tab. That tab, meanwhile, is exploding, fueled in part by staff overtime expenses and a steep rise in inmate healthcare costs. In 1987, the states collectively spent $10.6 billion of their general funds—their primary pool of discretionary tax dollars—on corrections. Last year, they spent more than $44 billion, a 315 percent jump, data from the National Association of State Budget Officers show. Adjusted to 2007 dollars, the increase was 127 percent. Over the same period, adjusted spending on higher education rose just 21 percent.

Taking a Different Tack

Faced with the mushrooming bills, many states are confronting agonizing choices and weathering bitter divisions in their legislatures. But lawmakers are by no means powerless before the budget onslaught. Indeed, a rising number of states already are diversifying their menu of sanctions with new approaches that save money but still ensure that the public is protected and that offenders are held accountable. And some are already reaping encouraging results. Kansas and Texas are well on their way.

Facing daunting projections of prison population growth, they have embraced a strategy that blends incentives for reduced recidivism with greater use of community supervision for lower-risk offenders. In addition, the two states increasingly are imposing sanctions other than prison for parole and probation violators whose infractions are considered “technical,” such as missing a counseling session. The new approach, born of bipartisan leadership, is allowing the two states to ensure they have enough prison beds for violent offenders, while helping less dangerous lawbreakers become productive, taxpaying citizens. No policymaker would choose this path if it meant sacrificing public safety. But gradually, some states are proving that deploying a broad range of sanctions can protect communities, punish  lawbreakers and conserve tax dollars for other pressing public needs.

Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project

Launched in 2006 as an operating project of the Pew Center on the States, the Public Safety Performance Project helps states advance fiscally sound, data-driven sentencing and corrections policies and practices that protect public safety, hold offenders accountable and control costs.

States have begun to take on the challenge, and the Public Safety Performance Project can help. Rather than engage in the paralyzing debate between punishment and rehabilitation, the Project pursues three non-ideological, nonpartisan objectives:

• To help states collect and analyze data on who is admitted to their prisons, how long
  they  stay, who returns, and the implications of these practices for public safety and state budgets;
• To help states understand how their existing sentencing, release, and community
  supervision policies, practices, and outcomes compare with those of other states; and
• To encourage states to use the best research available to advance reforms that will
  reduce crime and recidivism and deliver a solid return on taxpayers’ investments.

To read the full report, go to http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/report_detail.aspx?id=35904