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| Decline in Arizona inmate numbers raises questions |
| By azcentral.com - Bob Ortega |
| Published: 11/04/2011 |
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For two years, Arizona's Department of Corrections has been trying to award a contract for 5,000 more private-prison beds. Last year, the department canceled an initial round of bidding so it could beef up security requirements after three inmates escaped from a privately run prison. Last month, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge removed the latest obstacle, dismissing a lawsuit by a prison-watchdog group seeking to block the contract award. But now, after the delays, the Corrections Department faces a scenario that has been unfamiliar for 40 years: a decline in its prisoner population. And while Corrections officials continue to forecast an increase in prisoners, key factors the department itself cites to explain the recent decline suggest less certainty. State auditors estimate that the beds would cost $585 million over the next five years. "The fact we're moving forward with this outdated plan is mind-boggling to me," said Democratic state Rep. Chad Campbell, the House minority leader. Before moving forward, he said, "we need a comprehensive review of the prison system and especially the private prisons and the need for any more private prisons in this state." When the contracts were first proposed in the fall of 2009, the state's prisons were rapidly approaching capacity. For decades, the number of inmates in the state prison system had grown at a far faster rate than the state's population, peaking at 40,778 inmates that October. But over the two years since that peak, the state's prison population has fallen 1.6 percent, to 40,116 as of Oct. 31. Corrections Department officials, who say the extra beds will help ease crowding, project an additional 3,800 inmates by June 2015. Spokesman Barrett Marson said the department uses several data sources and methods to make prison population-growth projections. These include historical growth, county jail data, court filings, bookings and demographic data. Marson said the department also looks at less predictable factors such as possible changes in the economy, pending legislative action and changes in funding or policy within the criminal-justice system. But the reasons behind the recent decline raise questions over whether the prison population will reach the state's projections. Reasons behind decline In its fiscal 2011 information report, the Corrections Department cited three factors for the recent drop in prisoners: - Fewer convicts are coming in through the Maricopa County jails. The number of people awaiting trial in Maricopa County jails on felony charges has dropped 19 percent over the past two years. As Arizona's most populous county, Maricopa accounts for two-thirds of convicts flowing into the state's prisons. When or whether the numbers of convictions and felons may rise again is uncertain. Crime-rate trends do not necessarily correlate with conviction rates, criminologists say, meaning one can't be predicted from the other. Over the past decade, the number of felony cases filed in Maricopa County climbed 90 percent even as crime rates fell by a third. Court administrators don't make projections of criminal-charge or conviction rates, said Karen Arra, Maricopa County Superior Court spokeswoman. - Fewer convicts are being sent back to prison for violating probation. Across the state, probation programs have significantly cut the number of convicts who have their probations revoked for technical violations. While some changes in probation have been in the works for nearly a decade, the big recent impetus for this drop in revocations seems to have been the 2008 "Safe Communities Act." Under that act, the state promised to kick back to the counties 40 percent of any money saved if they could reduce revocations by sending people back to prison only for substantial violations. Even though the Legislature didn't wind up providing the promised funds, and later canceled the program, counties have managed to cut revocations by more than 40 percent over the past three years, sending 1,328 fewer probationers back to prison in the fiscal year that ended June 30 than three years earlier. Kathy Waters, the director of adult probation services for the Arizona Supreme Court, said she expects a further drop in probation revocations this year and next. - Fewer non-citizens are in state prisons. The number of what the Corrections Department calls "criminal aliens," or non-citizens, sent to state prisons has fallen by more than a third over the past two years. There were 942 fewer non-citizens in state prisons at the end of last month than at the end of October 2009. Corrections officials could not provide a breakdown of those who had been in the country legally versus without documentation at the time of their arrest; legal residents can lose their residency status when they are convicted of a crime. The decline in non-citizens in the prison system coincides with the statewide drop in undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics estimates that the number of undocumented immigrants in Arizona has fallen by roughly 100,000 over the past three years. Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said that while tougher immigration enforcement is having an impact, it's Arizona's sluggish economy, and the lack of jobs, that is the biggest factor. History suggests that as long as the economy remains weak, immigrant numbers are unlikely to rebound, Passel said. Preparing for the future Read More. |
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