Pennsylvania's corrections system spends millions of taxpayer dollars sending nonviolent offenders to prison and does not do enough to help them meet conditions for early release, said a study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Taxpayers spent $49 million housing inmates beyond the minimum release dates of sentences for misdemeanors and minor felonies committed in 2010. "The whole package will include a substantial amount of money that can be saved, and at the same time, we can improve the system," said Tony Fabelo, the center's research director.
The state's prison population climbed from 7,000 to 51,645 since 1980, in part because of mandatory-minimum sentences, longer prison terms, and incarceration of less violent offenders, said Katrina Currie of the Commonwealth Foundation. The state says 55.6 percent of the inmates are violent offenders. Corbett and other state leaders appointed the 32-member Pennsylvania Justice Reinvestment Workgroup last year to study how to save money on corrections. The Justice Center is expected to suggest keeping some low-risk inmates in county jails or treatment, increasing money for drug and alcohol treatment and violence prevention, and expanding use of technology such as electronic monitoring. "If you can get these nonviolent offenders into treatment quicker, so they could be paroled at their minimum sentence, there certainly could be some savings," said Linda Rosenberg of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
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By Edward P. Bane
This letter, from Edward P. Bane in Minnesota Correctional Facility-Lino Lakes, was originally published by The Beat Within, a juvenile justice system writing workshop, which has generously allowed The Crime Report to share.
Read full entry »A Michigan Department of Corrections' crackdown on parole absconders after high-profile crimes by state-supervised convicts has created a shortage in temporary bed space in Detroit, reports the Detroit News. With half of the state's 20,000 parolees living in the Detroit area, corrections officials are searching for 400-500 beds to house those suspected of violating the terms of their parole.
The state's predicament comes as the legislature is close to finalizing the Corrections Department budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The House calls for closing a prison and opening a privately run facility while the Senate is looking for millions in savings through wholesale job cuts while not closing any facilities. Michigan's prison population, which stood at 43,859 as of Friday, has increased by about 1,000 since the beginning of the year because of parolees going back to prison, a decline in the number of people being paroled and a slight increase in court-ordered prison sentences. Without temporary bed space, the department is unable to get parole absconders off the streets.
Read full entry »To make room for more inmates, the Norfolk County, Ma., jail’s gymnasium has been transformed into a dormitory and is filled with rows of skinny triple-bunk beds. Inmates have also had to sleep on the floor in temporary plastic beds known as “canoes,” reports the Boston Globe. Every prison and jail in Southeastern Massachusetts is operating over its capacity, and overcrowding is an issue facing every correctional institution in the state. Correction officials are bracing for an even bigger shortage of beds in the coming years as more prisoners arrive and more stay behind bars longer, due to tougher mandatory minimum-sentencing laws. The state Department of Correction projects the incarcerated population will grow from about 11,892 in 2011 to 14,753 by 2019.
In Bridgewater, the Old Colony Correctional Center was built to house 480 medium-security inmates but houses 809. At the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction in Dartmouth, every cell is double-bunked, and beds have taken over the gymnasium there, too, as the occupancy rate has skyrocketed to 384 percent. “It’s getting steadily worse,” said Leslie Walker of Prisoners’ Legal Services, a Boston-based advocacy group. “I don’t recall the numbers ever being this high.”
Read full entry »A North Carolina House committee voted to ban inmates on death row from watching television, reports the Raleigh News & Observer. The bill responds to a murderer’s letter to a newspaper bragging about his life on death row. Danny Hembree Jr., 50, said, “Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the (air conditioning), reading, taking naps at will, eating three well balanced hot meals a day [ ] Kill me if you can, suckers.”
Rules Committee Chairman Tim Moore, who visited death row, saw inmates using headphones to listen to the TVs, one with a Lionel Richie video playing. “For someone convicted of such a heinous crime, it’s [ ] it’s just wrong,” he said. Rep. John Blust asked “why stop at death row,” suggesting a complete eradication of TVs from the penitentiary system. Moore responded that studies have shown that television can be used to encourage good behavior.
For the first time in a decade, a political consensus was emerging last year in Louisiana that it was time to cut the state's highest-in-the-nation...
Read full entry »Oklahoma House Speaker Kris Steele, who led a three-year effort to pass legislation intended to control prison growth and change how the state handles prison issues, challenged lawmakers to continue similar efforts to reduce the state's nation-leading incarceration rates, The Oklahoman reports. “The tide has truly
It establishes a grant program to fund crime-reduction initiatives by local law enforcement agencies; requires at least nine months of post-release supervision of all felons, which should reduce the recidivism rate; establishes risk, mental health and substance abuse assessments and evaluations before convicted felons are sentenced; and develops intermediary revocation facilities for nonviolent offenders who violate drug court regulations or conditions of probation and parole, which should ease prison overcrowding and save money. It's expected the program will save $170 million in the next decade and provide $40 million to law enforcement agencies over a 10-year period to help pay for technology, overtime and targeting strategies such as hot-spot policing that increases police presence in high-crime
California Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration is sharply at odds with inmate advocates and a federal receiver over the future of the prison medical system, reports the Los Angeles Times. State officials told a federal judge they’re ready to take back control of the medical system in the next 30 days. The receiver said he should remain in charge until at least early 2014.
The Brown administration said prison health care has been “wholly transformed” in recent years. In addition, officials said, the ongoing reduction in the inmate population -- the result of a separate court order -- has made it easier to provide better medical care because prisons are less crowded. The inmate advocates who originally sued the state over poor medical care said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation still lacks the will, resources and leadership to prevent the system from backsliding. Receiver J. Clark Kelso said his control should not be ended until more improvements have been made. That includes lowering the inmate population to court-ordered limits, finishing a new medical facility, and making headway on other construction projects.
Read full entry »Larch Corrections Center, a minimum-custody prison near Vancouver, Wa., has assigned two shelter cats to each live with a pair of inmates in the hope that...
Read full entry »An Ohio video visitation program that helped 200 families keep in touch with incarcerated relatives has closed because it ran out of money, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The program allowed for face-to-face meetings, via video conferencing. Experts say its loss created a void that remains unfilled. Children who have a parent or parents behind bars are at greater risk of trouble themselves. Visitation can ease that. Social visits for inmates while they’re in prison can help lower recidivism rates once they get out.
A state grant that largely funded Project IMPACT (Incarcerated Mothers, Parents And Children’s Televisitation) ended last year. Director Caroljean Gates said most of the families who used the video program didn’t have the means to travel long distances to see incarcerated relatives. They also found videoconferencing more convenient than waiting to get on a visitor list at a state prison. For children, those meetings were important, she said, because children who have incarcerated parents have a higher risk of becoming teenage parents, dropping out of school, abusing drugs and committing a felony. A 2010 report by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction showed that in a sample of 3,396 people, 38 percent of female inmates and 21 percent of males had dependent children living with them at their time of arrest.
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By Ted Gest
A blue-ribbon panel of national scholars inaugurates a major project to study why U.S. incarceration rates are among the world’s highest.
Read full entry »A sweeping plan to make local officials responsible for supervising thousands of released California prisoners formerly monitored by the state has gotten off to a bumpy start in Los Angeles County, reports the Los Angeles Times. Many ex-criminals are not showing up for counseling appointments, some care centers are not being paid, and county bureaucrats are scrambling to correct foul-ups that have caused delays.
About 6,000 prisoners were shifted to county supervision under a realignment law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The intent was to cut state costs and reduce severe prison overcrowding by keeping nonviolent felons in local jails instead of transferring them to the state system. The supervision of probationers was also shifted to counties. Los Angeles County supervisors have been critical of realignment, saying the state was trying to pass costs to local government and fearing that a rise in crime would occur once prisoners are released. Over six months, about a quarter of the probationers have been arrested for allegedly committing new crimes, which is below the previous state average for probationers. But some politicians and community activists worry that the numbers could climb further, especially since about 10 percent of released convicts are not attending meetings or have gone missing.
Arizona's state prisons overuse solitary confinement in cruel, inhumane, and illegal ways, particularly for mentally ill prisoners and juveniles as young as 14, says an Amnesty International report quoted by the Arizona Republic. The group says Arizona uses solitary confinement as a punishment more than most other states or the federal government.
Amnesty International found that some inmates are held in isolation for months and sometimes years. It called on the state to use the practice only as a last resort and only for a short duration. The state said that 3,130 inmates, or 8 percent of the prison population, were being held in the highest-security, maximum-custody units as of Friday, and most were confined alone. Amnesty said the state's own figures show that 35 percent of inmates in maximum security were committed for non-violent crimes. The report said that 14 children ages 14 to 17 had been held in maximum custody under conditions similar to those of adults: 22 to 24 hours a day in their cells, limited exercise alone.
Read full entry »Colorado officials will close a $184-million high-security prison open just 18 months and two-thirds empty, reports the Los Angeles Times. The 316-bed prison at Canon City is the fourth Colorado correctional facility ordered closed in the last three years because of a dwindling prison population. At its peak in 2009, the inmate population was 23,220. As of February, it had dropped to 21,562. A decrease of 900 more is expected by June 2013.
Adam Gelb of the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Center on the States said about half the states wre making efforts to reduce prison populations. Other states and the federal system still show increases. Colorado corrections director Tom Clements said the state was part of a seismic shift in attitudes about the wisdom of locking up nonviolent offenders for long periods. If alternatives are well implemented and include good supervision, repeat offenses can be cut by 30 percent and the cost is about one-tenth of the $30,000-a-year average for housing a prisoner, Gelb said.
In the Texas prison system's Wynne Unit, home of one of the state's two computer repair labs, each month inmate workers fix or discard up to 250,000 pounds of malfunctioning equipment, reports the Houston Chronicle. In a state whose prison work programs are best known for agriculture and license plates, the computer shops represent the cutting edge of a factory system that produces everything from street signs to mattresses for state college dorms and soap for scrubbing jailhouse floors.
Texas Correctional Industries factories in 37 prisons provide job training for up to 5,200 inmates and help cut costs for cities, counties, schools, and other tax-supported entities. Barbara Belbot, an associate criminal justice professor at the University of Houston Downtown said, "You've got to keep these guys working, right? It's hard to keep these guys busy. You've got to come up with the right mix of work activities." Kevin Von Rosenberg, work and training division manager, said that in the 156,000-inmate system, up to 24 percent of those released from prison return within three years. Among the inmate workers who stay on the job the longest, recidivism drops to 11 percent.
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