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| 1.7 million’s a crowd |
| By Ann Coppola, News Reporter |
| Published: 07/30/2007 |
You’ve probably seen a lot of ‘prison overcrowding’ stories grabbing the headlines lately. According to the latest Pew Charitable Trusts report, Public Safety, Public Spending, the projected growth rate of the United States prison population for the next five years will triple that of the general population. That translates to adding a whopping 192,000 inmates to an already stretched system.The report provides state-by-state forecasts for prison populations and costs and comes out of the independent nonprofit’s Public Safety Performance Project, which helps states control corrections costs through research and policy assessment. “The purpose of the report is to get a handle on exactly how much growth is expected in the U.S. prison population and in costs,” explains project director Adam Gelb. Getting a handle on the numbers turned out to be an alarming exercise. By 2011, the U.S. is expected to have 1.7 million people incarcerated and $27.5 billion spent on the new inmates alone. “Prison population is determined by two things and two things only: admission and length of stay,” Gelb explains. “There’s a tremendous variety of factors that influence both of those numbers.” Public Safety, Public Spending identifies four big drivers of prison populations and budgets: the growing female and elderly inmate population, problems retaining corrections staff, the rise in methamphetamine cases, and enhanced penalties for sex crimes. “It’s important to remember that most of the overall growth in the national population is due to the increases in a handful of states,” says Gelb. “The trends we flagged, like meth, were those that most often have an impact in western and Midwest states, where the largest growth rates are seen.” Big states like California, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona all have populations growing at high rates. States in the south and Northeast are growing, but not as rapidly. On the other hand, there could be one new prisoner for every four current inmates in Colorado, Washington, Utah, and South Dakota if no policy changes are made. “People thought the big prison building boom had come to an end,” Gelb says. “When they saw our report they were startled to learn that in fact it’s continuing at quite a pace.” A pace that is being quickened by the country’s stubbornly static recidivism rate. “To me, the biggest driving force of prison populations today is the feedback loop of probation and parole violators,” Gelb adds. “These violators are people who can be held accountable for breaking the rules in ways that are effective and less costly.” According to the report, “total national spending on corrections has jumped to more than $60 billion from just $9 billion in 1980, and yet recidivism rates have barely changed.” “Basically, recidivism is not moving because the vast majority of prisoners do not participate for any substantial period of time in a program that would reduce recidivism rates,” says JFA Institute President James Austin. His consulting firm collected the data for Public Safety, Public Spending. “Secondly, many of the programs in the prison system are ineffective,” Austin adds. “Third, several studies have shown no improvement in successful completion rates by parole departments.” Austin says the issue can be boiled down to one simple idea. “The problem is we are keeping large numbers of people in prison for too long. Research shows there is no relationship between length of stay and risk of recidivism, but sentencing lengths keep going up.” In 1993, the average length of stay for an offender in the United States was 22 to 23 months. Today the average is 30 months. “Just going from 22 to 30 months increases the prison population by 33 percent, about 500,000 inmates,” Austin says. “You can go back to 22 months and save a huge amount of money.” Austin says strategic policy changes like these, not more money, will clear the path to a solution. “There’s probably too much money in corrections,” he says. “What needs to happen is the reallocation of money out of longer prison terms and into community based programs.” Figuring out how to accomplish this is the Pew Project’s next goal. Currently, they are assisting ten states with additional research and analysis. “We’re working in Alabama, Kansas and Texas to name a few, and we’ve gotten requests for assistance from several other states who want expert advice and research,” Gelb says. “The goal of the project and our work in the states is to control these spiraling costs and to enhance public safety.” Related Resources: Read the Public Safety, Public Spending report More on the Public Safety Performance Project |
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