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| AL prison bill hopes to save $106 million over 5 years |
| By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News |
| Published: 03/28/2011 |
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Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb says that a proposed package of prison reform bills can help reverse the skyrocketing rise in the inmate population. She predicts that the bills would enable the state to save $106 million over the next few years. A broad package of sentencing and corrections reform bills aims to reduce the state prison population, then use the savings to bolster supervision of convicted felons and improve public safety, said Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb. "It's the theory of reinvestment," Cobb said. You invest the savings to get an even better result." If the bills introduced already in the current session of the Legislature are approved, the state would save $106 million in prison costs within five years, Cobb said. Long-term, the reforms would reverse a get-tough-on-all-criminals trend that has sent prison populations and costs soaring, but has had a limited impact on the crime rate, she said. For the first time in state history, the judiciary committees of both the state House and Senate will meet in joint session Wednesday to get input on the bills. "The fact we are doing that shows how historic this package of bills is," said state Sen. Cam Ward (R-Alabaster), co-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "They're controversial. But prison overcrowding is so bad, we can't be afraid to talk about it." The reforms were recommended by the bipartisan Alabama Public Safety and Sentencing Coalition, which includes legislators, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, law enforcement officials and members of both the state Board of Pardons and Paroles and the state Sentencing Commission. Help came from the Vera Institute of Justice, Applied Research Services and the Pew Center on the States. The coalition looked at sentencing data and corrections policies to create a consensus report issued earlier this month recommending ways Alabama could improve public safety while providing a better return on taxes spent on criminal justice. The bills call for new sentencing approaches that would put fewer non-violent offenders, including drug users, in prison. Instead they would be diverted into drug and other special courts or community-based corrections. "We have had an over-reliance on incarceration," Cobb said. "But it's not made us safer, and it has wasted tax dollars. It's easy to put a person in prison. It's not so easy to fix them so they don't reoffend." Community corrections programs also cost less than prison, emphasize employment and are partially funded by the felons' real-world wages, Cobb said. The sentencing reforms should cut the projected prison population by 5,000 within five years, the coalition report said. The package also calls for better supervision for inmates after their release, with an eye toward reducing recidivism and making ex-offenders more productive. Some 2,100 inmates per year are released now with no supervision at all, according to the coalition. But for the reforms to work, savings from prison costs must be plowed into resources for community corrections and post-conviction supervision, Cobb said. Parole officers now average 196 cases each, triple the national standard. Ward predicted some of the proposals would pass this session. The reinvestment aspect of the proposals will find support among many legislators, he said. "That, in my opinion, is one of the strongest parts of the package," he said. to Read More, click here. |
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