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| RI Second In Nation For Prison Inmate Spending |
| By golocalprov.com - Chip Young |
| Published: 06/03/2011 |
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Rhode Island ranks second in the U.S. in annual spending on prison inmates per year. With a three-year contract with the RI Brotherhood of Correctional Officers in place until June 30, 2012, it is unlikely that costs will go down. And despite a gradually decreasing incarceration rate, the cost per inmate may actually go up, according to RI Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall. Only Maine pays more for the care and feeding of their prison population, according to the National Institute of Corrections, an agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons. At approximately $43,000 per year, per inmate, the total cost for the RI inmate population comes to nearly $150 million per year as of 2010, according to Wall. Personnel Costs Run High In 2010, the Adult Correctional Institutions had an average population of 3,300 inmates, down from 4,000 in 2008. “Over 80 percent of our costs are personnel-related,” said Wall. “This involves intense supervision at all our facilities, around the clock. And 80 percent of that is “direct supervision” employees (essentially corrections officers).” Average salary for the COs is $56,610, and there are currently 829 on the books, 61 percent of the total DOC staff. They work three regular shifts, with varied numbers based upon time of day. There is also a shift from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. that is required for handling of visitors and inmate recreation. Staffing Drives Costs Although the inmate average population has gone down – along with recidivism – in the past few years, the requirements of fully stocking cell blocks with COs even with a reduced inmate population makes the per-inmate cost go further upwards. “We have to have enough staff on a cellblock whether it is (hypothetically) 10 prisoners or 100, if the block is being used,” Wall said. “We try to close housing modules (cellblocks) whenever possible, but sometimes we can’t make the most of the space,” Wall explained. But there remains the need for constant security on basic staffing on cellblocks, perimeter security, and at check points. Walking an Overtime Tightwire Overtime work has also been a bone of contention in ACI costs. Ellen Evans Alexander, the DOC’s assistant director for administration, said, “We do run on overtime, because we don’t have the full complement of officers we would like. But a certain amount of overtime benefits taxpayers. But with 41 to 45 percent benefits, we start losing taxpayer dollars if the overtime amounts to enough to trigger double time (over 16 hours in a row)." “Overtime is built into the system, but we try to keep double time to a minimum,' Evans said. “We probably want to be closer to a full complement of 1,064 COs, but we are trying to find a critical balance between overtime, and what is enough FTEs to feel we are operating efficiently, and (factoring in) things such as the costs of training and selection." Three Major Reasons There are three major reasons why RI is on the high end of the cost scale, said Wall “One is because it is a smaller system,” he said. (In comparison, the Connecticut corrections system houses 17,000 inmates.) “Because it is a smaller system, you have no economies of scale.” The ACI also suffers from the same rise in expense of such basics as utilities and food costs with which an average citizen has to contend. “Second, we are known as a ‘unified system,’” said Wall. “We run a jail (the Intake Center), as well as a prison.” Read More. |
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