|
|
| Capitol Conundrum: Fewer inmates, same high costs |
| By bridgemi.com - Peter Luke |
| Published: 02/07/2012 |
|
Michigan -- Round numbers can provoke course corrections because they are easier to understand and, if large enough, shock the system. Here are a couple: 50,000 and $2 billion. The first is the inmate population barrier breached at the Michigan Department of Corrections in 2006. The department’s budget first exceeded the latter figure in fiscal year 2008. But, after years of criticism for vacuuming up growing percentages of a shrinking general fund, significant progress actually is being made in reducing the number of felons incarcerated by the state. Not nearly as much progress, however, is being made to wring savings from the smaller inmate counts. Parole policy alterations after Michigan’s inmate population peaked at 51,554 inmates in March 2007, more effective prisoner re-entry programming and fewer commitments to prison have combined to slash the prison population by 17 percent. MDOC numbers chief Stephen Debor told a Senate subcommittee last month that the number of inmates behind bars in December 2011, 42,904, was the lowest since 1998. Why? The 65.6-percent parole approval rate in the first year of the Snyder administration is the highest since 1990. Parole revocations, now at 174 per 1,000 parolees, are a record low in 24 years of recordkeeping. Prisoner intake of 8,750 in 2011 was the lowest since 1995. As the population was hitting a record and the parole rate was 52 percent, some 17,000 inmates were serving beyond their minimum sentence. In December 2011, that number had been whittled to below 8,500. On Feb. 9, Gov. Rick Snyder releases his 2013 budget proposal. So, as the administration appears committed to programs that reduce incarceration levels, what does it intend to do to save money as a result? Why, in fact, does Michigan continue to spend so much on its prison system even as it sheds thousands of inmates and shutters facilities across the state? “That’s why we continue to ask the department, how we can close more than a dozen facilities, see a significant decline in population yet continue to have a per-day rate per prisoner in significant excess of those who we benchmark ourselves against in other states?” said Sen. John Proos, R-St. Joseph and chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on corrections. Read More. |
MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|
Comments:
No comments have been posted for this article.
Login to let us know what you think