Budget Crisis Forcing States To Rethink Prisons
h/t to Scott at Grits for this article
NEW YORK — Their budgets in crisis, governors, legislators and prison officials across the nation are making or considering policy changes that will likely remove tens of thousands of offenders from prisons and parole supervision.
Collectively, the pending and proposed initiatives could add up to one of biggest shifts ever in corrections policy, putting into place cost-saving reforms that have struggled to win political support in the tough-on-crime climate of recent decades.
"Prior to this fiscal crisis, legislators could tinker around the edges — but we're now well past the tinkering stage," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration.
"Many political leaders who weren't comfortable enough, politically, to do it before can now — under the guise of fiscal responsibility — implement programs and policies that would be win/win situations, saving money and improving corrections," Mauer said
In California, faced with a projected $42 billion deficit and prison overcrowding that has triggered a federal lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes, reducing the parole population by about 70,000. He also wants to divert more petty criminals to county jails and grant early release to more inmates — steps that could trim the prison population by 15,000 over the next 18 months.
1 comment:
Now we hear about California finally waking up, when will Colorado face the facts of life. Here you have Zavaras trying to open more prisons, to wreck the lives of more kids and familys.
Getting rid of all the parole expense alone would save millions. Parole only does two things, gives some idiot a job and second sends people back to prison for breaking a rule established by the idiot. Why not release the inmates to there familys. A lot of inmates come from stable familys. Yet we are ignored by DOC. djw
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